Magical Mars
by Meandering Fox
Summary: Crossover with The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. Harry and Hermione leave everyone and everything they know behind and embark on the greatest adventure in history: the colonization of Mars.
1. Prologue

_Hi folks. This is my new story. It's a crossover story. How about that, huh? My favorite books of all time (way more favorite than Harry Potter) are the Mars Trilogy books by Kim Stanley Robinson. Red Mars, Green Mars and (dun dun DUN) Blue Mars. I personally think they are some of the best science fiction books ever written, and some of the better fiction books of the last twenty years. Believe it or not, Robinson is my favorite author. Shocking, eh?_

_If you don't know the story of the Mars Trilogy, I'll give a brief (very brief) synopsis here. 100 scientists, engineers and so on fly to Mars in 2026 to begin colonization of the planet. Throughout the 200 (or so) years of future history, the various characters have a bunch of interesting stuff happen in their lives, including a revolution or two against the corrupt and power hungry transnational corporations on Earth. Many of the characters have extreme personal or political philosophies, so if this kind of story doesn't interest you...don't read this. Or the Mars Trilogy. If you do think this might be interesting, or have read the books...then you might like this story._

_The basic beginning idea here is that Harry and Hermione are going to Mars, with Hermione as one of the original first hundred. The why and how will be explained throughout the story. If you have any questions, you can look up Mars Trilogy on wikipedia or google. If you can't find the answer you're looking for, just send me a message or review. I'm usually pretty good about responding. _

_This is the prologue (as you can see from the title) and is shorter than the other chapters will be. The first part of this, before we get to Harry and Hermione, is based on the intro to Red Mars. I tried to keep it pretty original, but some of the lines are so damn good that I didn't change them too much. Most of it is completely original, if very influenced by the book. _

_I know this is a super long A/N, and I apologize, but this story will probably confuse the hell out of a lot of people who don't know what they're getting into. Oh, and this is going to be mostly Harry-centric POV with a little bit of other characters, mostly Hermione and Desmond, thrown in for fun._

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**Prologue**

_Mars was an empty planet before we came. Forces beyond imagination or magic brought planetesimals together into a roiling mass of liquid rock. In the vacuum of space, Mars surged and shook and cooled, then exploded outwards again, spitting fiery bits of itself at the sun, at Earth. At the stars._

_All of this happened in silence. Unobserved. For billions of years the mineral unconsciousness of an entire planet existed on its own. Volcanoes rose from the somewhat solid surface and climbed to the edge of its infant atmosphere. Craters big enough to swallow a thousand Britains formed as meteors struck from the nearby asteroid belt. Canyon systems that made the Thames look like a creek you could step over yawned open as the battered planet continued to be pummeled._

_The only witness to any of this was us. On the planet next closest to the sun, we experienced the sight of a bright red star floating through the sky, sometimes reversing direction, and told stories._

_In the Muggle world, everyone knows the story of Mars. Great cities destroyed by floods. Civilizations wiped out as the planet froze up or dried out. Writers and artists and scientists created and guessed and theorized for thousands of years, and that tiny red star in the sky meant something to everyone. War. Beauty. Hell. Fear. Hope._

_Death._

_Every civilization has had a name for Mars. Many of the older names left a particular impression from each of those cultures. Nirgal, Mangala, Kasei, Al-Qahira, Ares._

_Mars. Fire Star. The God of War._

_Mythology as old as humanity surrounded the planet, and then the first long range telescopes gave us our first close look. Years went by, and with every advancement astronomers achieved, the historical, mythological Mars disappeared bit by bit._

_The great tales of grand canals and dying civilizations were finally shattered by the Mariner and Viking missions. The photos they sent back showed an arid, desert planet seemingly devoid of life. Scientists had literally learned millions of times more about Mars than they had known before._

_It became apparent that we are the only consciousness Mars has ever had._

_Meanwhile, in the Magical world, people weren't nearly as curious._

_We studied Mars in Astronomy, learned to plot its orbit and when it would be brightest. But it was the centaurs and seers who truly paid it the attention it deserved, even if their conclusions were somewhat muddled, in our opinions._

_Hundreds of probes followed and then a manned mission. They all confirmed the same thing. There was no evidence of life on Mars._

_And so stories have filled in the gaps of this mysterious planet, just as they did during the Roman Empire, or the Tang Dynasty, or on the savanna as humans first climbed down out of the trees._

_Stories of hundreds of micro-fossils being exposed by floods, and then washed away, never to be rediscovered. Ruined cities revealed by dust storms, but buried again as the winds calmed. Big Man and his many adventures. And the little red people, always seen out of the corner of the eye, but unwilling to talk to anyone since John._

_These tall tales, what some would call wishful thinking, were created to give Mars life. A sense of existence beyond the mineral. And because we are still those animals that descended from the trees on the savanna, still those people who dismissed the centaurs' star gazing but felt a chill as we followed their eyes, Mars has never ceased to be what it has been since the very beginning - a great sign, a great symbol, a great power._

_And so we came here. It will always be a power, but now it has become a place._

* * *

Harry waited in the airlock of the _Ares_. Alone.

Not quite alone, in reality. He hadn't spoken to anyone since he saw Hermione right before his shuttle launched. A notice-me-not charm was still in effect as he waited at the back of a group of technicians under his invisibility cloak. Hermione had applied the charm right before they had said their goodbyes.

"Harry, remember that you cannot use any magic, whatsoever."

"I know, I know. The cloak and potions are fine, but no wand. I remember. We've been over this. I won't be able to get to it, anyway."

He had known Hermione was nervous. They were leaving Earth, and everything and everyone they had ever known, after-all. Both of them were a bit touchy.

"All right, I'm going to apply the charm now. There will be three open seats on the shuttle. You can't...you can't wear a suit. They're all specially fitted, so..."

Harry smiled at the worry in her eyes. "I'll just disapparate if anything goes wrong. It shouldn't matter at that point, right?"

She smiled back, a bit teary. "Right. Just be careful. I'll stop reminding you to do things you already know."

Hermione had cast the notice-me-not charm on him and Harry had placed his wand and most of his personal effects into an ever-expanding bag, which Hermione proceeded to shrink. He kneeled and placed that into a specially secured compartment of his normal, non-magical bag which contained several bottles of potions that were silenced so their clanking wouldn't attract attention, as well as enough supplies to last him for a month.

Harry stood up and stared at Hermione. The two of them had been through so much in the thirty-five years since they had met on the Hogwarts Express. Hermione's eyes glistened from unshed tears as she smiled mournfully.

"I'll see you on the _Ares_. Try to stay out of trouble for the next three weeks, OK?" said Hermione.

"It's the biggest, most advanced ship Muggles have ever constructed. I'll have plenty of places to hide."

"I know."

They were silent for several minutes as Harry glances around the small courtyard they were standing in that was surrounded by NASA offices. He felt a smooth breeze blow into his face as he stared at the green leaves of the trees and blue sky. He could smell the ocean only a few blocks away. In less than an hour, he would never experience them again.

"I'll see you in three weeks, Hermione."

Harry turned and began the short walk to the building that would lead him to the launch pad and the shuttle. As he entered an empty corridor, he pulled his cloak out of his pocket and draped it over himself and his bag.

He'd had no trouble getting aboard the shuttle, and quite enjoyed the push from the acceleration as the ship made its ascent into orbit. The lack of gravity barely had an effect on him after he'd trained with Hermione using a variety of spells that simulated the effect. Evading the notice of the technicians had been simple if nerve-wracking. He did his best to breath and move as quietly as possible, though the banging noises that seemed to be surrounding him in the air as the airlock pressurized were disconcerting.

And then he entered the _Ares_. The reactor had been turned on a month ago, and all the tests indicated it was fully operational. Since the first hundred wouldn't be arriving for three weeks, most of the toruses were powered down and the _Ares _wouldn't begin the spin to create artificial gravity until after they had left Earth orbit. However, life support was functioning, though Hermione had said he might have a bit of trouble finding a working water source.

Harry silently made his way toward where he knew the farm to be. When he was safely away from the technicians, he took off his cloak, stuffed it back into his pocket and withdrew his AI. Calling up the map of the _Ares_, he began to push himself along the corridors with purpose.

But he couldn't help but be awed by some of what he was seeing, even with his vision limited by the low light.

He entered Torus C from the central shaft and floated in silent wonderment. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light, but when they did he let out a low whistle for which he immediately chastised himself.

Each of the eight toruses was a hexagon made of six fifty-meter long and ten-meter wide external fuel tanks from the NASA shuttle fleet. The tank in which he was located was not separated into private rooms or conference areas like much of the rest of the ship. It was designed to be a park. With the trees already planted and paths laid down, it appeared to Harry as if he was on Earth without any gravity.

He continued to float and stare for several minutes, his mind trying to process the surge of life in the otherwise sterile _Ares._ After he finished gaping, Harry mentally shook himself and realized that he would have to crawl along ceiling of what he now realized was Atrium C. Struts along the relative top of the tank, along with light fixtures, would allow him to cross the atrium without getting stuck without a handhold.

Finally, he entered the farm tank. It looked like a huge inside-out greenhouse without any plants. He pulled an official mission flashlight out of his bag and glanced at the hydroponics waiting for the farm crew. Five separate clear rooms lined each wall of the tank. Each room would house a different plant that Hiroko Ai, the head of the farm team, planned to experiment with in Martian gee. Harry knew there were another six of these tanks throughout toruses C, E and F; but this particular tank also held the main office and supply closet for the farm.

Harry entered the office and found a sleeping cot and a shower inside. He pulled a water collector from his bag, let the flashlight hover next to his head and attached the collector to the shower nozzle. Holding his breath, Harry pressed the button which would start the shower and waited a moment.

Nothing happened.

He sighed in disappointment and was about to switch the shower off when he heard a soft groan from behind the wall. Suddenly, water shot into the collector. Harry was so surprised that he nearly forgot to turn the water off before it overflowed his bottle, which would have sent droplets across the office, surely noticeable by the crew once they arrived.

Taking his newly full water bottle, Harry kicked off the wall and landed next to the cot, which he set up quickly. One thing he had learned while being trained by Hermione to work in low gee was how easy it was to become tired. You had to put in the same effort to stop something from moving as you did to start it, including yourself.

After he made a few quick notes about his exploration of the _Ares, _Harry took a long drink of water and put his things safely away in his bag. He strapped his bag to the wall and himself to the cot, then closed his eyes.

"Well, here we are."

Harry slept.

* * *

_I don't know how long it will take me to update this, and I am still writing "Harry Potter and The Trust" so don't worry. If it takes me awhile to update, do yourself a big favor and go to the bookstore and buy the Mars Trilogy books. Or you can download them. You'll like them. Really._


	2. The First Hundred 1 of 2

**The First Hundred (Part 1 of 2)**

_Magic is a mysterious thing. For thousands of years, humans and other lesser known species have been creating, practicing and studying magic. The first recorded usage of magic comes from scrolls discovered by Gringotts in an ancient Egyptian tomb. They are thought to be almost six thousand years old._

_Theories about how magic came to be, and why certain individuals are capable of it, are numerous and varied. One of the most commonly held beliefs is that it has been part of life since the beginning. Many have lamented the loss of power over the years, but there has been no proof that the number or percentage of magical beings has changed significantly throughout history. Tales of Atlantis and Merlin and other notable examples of extreme power have more than likely been exaggerated through the stories told and passed down through the generations. _

_Throughout the history of the wizarding world, the application of magic has changed very little. Witches and wizards use it to make their lives easier and more convenient, similar to muggles and technology. However, unlike muggle technology, magic has not advanced. _

_Certainly there have been innovations in spell creation, potions, the mind arts and the many other branches of magic. The core of it, the reason for its existence, has never been explained. Discovering that you can use electricity to not only power a light bulb but also a computer is not the same as discovering you can create electricity._

_Muggles have been discovering and creating for thousands of years, and while the magical world has benefitted from these advancements, magic has been static. _

_Maybe there isn't anything more to discover about magic. Maybe magic just is, and there is no way to answer the 'whys' that have been asked. That's no reason to stop asking, though._

* * *

Harry woke up without knowing the time. He went through his normal routine: filled his water bottle, took a nutrient potion, ate a protein bar and then straightened up the farm's office.

Each day was the same. Harry would erase all evidence of his existence and then explore the _Ares. _It was a massive ship. Eight hexagonal toruses encircled the central shaft. From the observation port at the front, to the nuclear powered engines was a distance of over six-hundred meters. He was careful to not be seen by the occasional technician and used his cloak.

There was enough room for a thousand people on the _Ares_, but the First Hundred were afforded more care than even most of them believed they deserved, according to Hermione. Harry eventually came to know his way around the ship as well as the designers.

One night, about a week after he had arrived, a week in compete isolation other than his AI, he had floated into the dining hall kitchen in Torus B. The sight of several metric tons of dehydrated food made his mouth water. Everything from porridge to mashed potatoes to sausage lined the supply cabinets. Packets of dried vegetables and fruits, so many different types that he could not recognize many of them, drew his eyes, and it was all Harry could do to stop himself from stealing a few for himself. The protein bars Hermione had supplied him with were everything he needed to survive, but they were tasteless. The potions were revolting.

Harry floated by the door trying to convince himself to go out and explore yet again. It was the only barrier he had against the boredom that was beginning to consume him. But his wanderings were becoming tiring. He often felt fatigued and long ago memories of growing up in a cupboard flitted through his mind. The two experiences were not really comparable, but the crushing isolation was depressingly familiar.

Right as he began to push the door open the normally dim lights inside the farming office, as well as the lights outside in the greenhouse section of the tank, flickered to life.

Harry squinted, ready to bolt to the rear exit of the office. Three technicians floated into the farm-to-be with a train of sealed crates trailing behind them. He watched as they used small motors, apparently computer controlled to maintain the crates' stability using short bursts of pressurized air, to guide the train inside. They unpacked them as quickly as was possible in micro-gravity, though they left several unopened and began to float them towards the office where Harry had been making his home for the past- Harry realized he had no idea how long he had been on the _Ares_. Could it have been three weeks already?

He shook his head. Hermione had said there would be several deliveries in the final three days before the First Hundred arrived: perishable goods, farming supplies, nutritional supplements for the colonists and their personal effects. Only three more days, then. Or possibly less. Harry rapidly covered himself with the invisibility cloak and grabbed his bag before slipping through the back door of the farm office and entering a storage tank. More than half of all the tanks that made up the toruses of the _Ares_ were nothing more than holding areas for supplies the colony would need on Mars that couldn't survive waiting on the planet's surface for two years. Much of the heavy machinery needed for constructing the colony was at the designated landing point, waiting to be assembled into humanity's first permanent home away from Earth. Everything else would be brought along with them, hence the need for such a huge ship.

Harry had once seen John Boone interviewed on Muggle television. He had still been on Mars, during that three week period when the entire world had seemed to stop. The interview had been recorded so that the viewers wouldn't be forced to wait on the fifteen minute delay for the questions to reach John and then another fifteen minutes for his answer to return to Earth. James, Ginny and Lily had not been interested, with James even going as far as to repeat what some of his pureblood friends had stated; that it was an elaborate hoax. Harry had taken the boys to a few films before they'd started Hogwarts, and James was convinced that since the first Mars Landing wasn't as visually impressive, it couldn't be real. After all, if Muggles could make it look like you were watching a recording of ancient Earth or spaceships in another galaxy, why did the visual quality from Mars look resemble the family holiday videos Dudley made them watch every summer?

But Albus was entranced. He had stared, transfixed at the television, laughing at John's jokes and muttering exclamations to himself throughout the interview. His son's fascination with the Mars mission began to spiral out of control, to the point where he spent hours researching it and almost lost the ability to speak of anything else. Harry bought him a muggle model of the landing craft. On the box, a picture of it relative to a double decker bus showed how small it truly was. Harry and Albus both had shuddered, though for different reasons, at the thought of spending almost two years inside something so small, with no escape except for the desolation of space or the poisonous atmosphere of Mars.

However, Harry was on the _Ares. _It was the largest spacecraft ever built. But unlike the first mission, this would be a three-hundred day, one-way trip.

* * *

He spent the rest of the day avoiding the technicians. There were several times when he was afraid that his feet had been revealed by someone passing by and creating a breeze. He waited, holding his breath, while the fear of being sent back to Earth and never seeing Hermione again made his heart pound in his ears.

No one noticed him. He eventually found himself in the observation bubble at the front of the _Ares_ and hooked his feet into one of the tethered footholds before curling his legs up and wrapping himself completely in his cloak. None of the technicians had any reason to interrupt him there. The various instruments and telescopes had been installed months earlier.

Harry floated for hours in the darkened room. After the first few minutes had passed and his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he'd glanced out the window.

The _Ares' _orbit was about halfway between Earth and the moon, nearly two-hundred thousand kilometers from Earth. From such a distance, it was difficult to make out any details of either, but one thing Harry could see was stars. Billions of them. Nothing in his Astronomy classes had prepared him to see the entire universe outside a single window. It was a paralyzing sight. Harry's breathing had sped up as he had begun to hyperventilate. His heart raced as a sense of vertigo, combined with the micro-gravity, forced his eyes closed.

After a minute of deep breathing, Harry calmed himself and reopened his eyes. The stars were even more prominent and as he floated toward the window at the front of the room, Earth became visible.

It was something he had seen before. Earth, as seen from space, was a well known image even in the magical world. The difference between seeing it in pictures and with his own eyes was remarkable. The Earth was obviously a sphere, and even at such a distance he could still make out differences in the clouds and seas. The bright blue of the Mediterranean reflected the sun and Harry's eyes drifted north toward Britain.

It was so _small. _He couldn't see London, or any city for that matter. The entire planet seemed to be complete wilderness. Different shades of green and blue dominated, with the light khaki and brown of deserts and savannas balancing the cooler colors. Pure, brilliant white glowed at the poles. Antarctica was bathed in sunlight, the southern solstice would occur in - Harry checked his AI and noted the date: December 18, 2026.

Three days.

The _Ares _would launch on December 21, the day of the southern solstice. The First Hundred were scheduled to arrive on the 19th. Tomorrow. He would see Hermione. Finally, he would have someone to talk to, even if infrequently.

Movement caught his eye. Harry looked to his left and saw a shuttle as it separated itself from the _Ares_. It floated slowly back and spun on its axis so that it was facing the general direction of Earth. Thrusters fired in bright bursts as the shuttle progressed along its course. Harry watched it with the realization that the next day, ten more would arrive with ninety-nine non-magical passengers and Hermione.

His eyes followed the shuttle until it disappeared among the stars. He then spent several minutes attempting to identify as many of the constellations as he could. It was difficult with so many stars that weren't visible from Earth, but he managed so find a few. He couldn't find Mars. There were too many stars.

* * *

Most of the time Harry had spent on the _Ares _involved getting to know the ship. He'd attempted to read some scientific papers about Mars on his AI, but unlike Hermione, he was unable to concentrate on something so dry for long periods of time. Hermione would read anything and absorbed the knowledge she gained without ever seeming to forget it. That was one of the reasons she had managed to slip herself into the First Hundred selection process without having to use much magical influence.

Harry didn't have the stamina or patience for that. And so, without the ability to fool some of the smartest minds on Earth, regardless of magical ability, he'd had to rely on Hermione's position to sneak aboard and become a stowaway.

Knowing that the almost ten-month journey to Mars would require stealth to avoid the other colonists, Harry spent most of his time finding spots to hide. Concealment would be difficult, even with his cloak, and any detection would be a disaster.

Hermione had impressed on him that using magic onboard the _Ares_ could be enough to kill them all. They'd both witnessed televisions screens flicker and cars stall out because of simple spells. The number of airplane crashes that had been caused by magic were unknown, but several incidents had been confirmed. A simple cooling charm had brought down an Airbus 880 several years earlier, though a miracle landing had resulted in nothing worse than some broken bones.

So Harry knew the importance of not using magic. With his wand stashed in his shrunken bag, the only risk was from wandless or accidental magic. At forty-six years old, accidental magic was something that hadn't happened to him for many years, and since using wandless magic took a great amount of effort and concentration, he was confident in his ability to control himself.

When he finally exited the central shaft and reentered Torus C, Harry heard his stomach growl. He hadn't realized how long he'd been awake and wandering around the _Ares_. The farm tank was just as dim as before, but the crates that were secured to the walls in the various greenhouses made it look like a new home that was about to be unpacked. He glanced at some of the crates, curious about their contents. Most them were labeled with various letter and number combinations, which told him nothing. A few had different alphabets. Harry guessed they were Japanese characters, but didn't bother to check his AI.

He entered the farm's office and hooked his bag on the wall before taking off his cloak and stuffing it into his pocket. Reaching into his bag, Harry pulled out a nutrient bar and one of the last bottles of potion Hermione had given him. He sighed as he brought the potion to his lips. Drinking one every three days was a chore that he would have rather done without. The initial taste wasn't too horrible, but the aftertaste lingered for hours and reminded him of what his mouth felt like the morning after drinking too much firewhiskey with Ron or one of the other Weasley brothers.

The nutrient bars did nothing to mask the taste, and Harry had quickly decided that cardboard probably had a more appetizing flavor. As he turned around, water bottle in hand, he noticed that several of the crates that had been delivered earlier were tethered to the wall next to the closet where his cot was stored. As before, the identifying markers on all of them, whether legible or not to Harry, were meaningless. What he did notice, so suddenly that he launched himself halfway across the office away from the crates, was that one of them was moving.

It was shaking in a rhythmic fashion, lurching repeatedly against the tether which was holding it in place. Assuming there was some sort of animal inside, Harry cautiously floated toward the row of crates. He heard grunting of some sort and tried to match the sound to any of the non-magical animals he was familiar with, which admittedly wasn't all that many. A dull thud echoed through the office, which was silent save for Harry's breath and the low hum of the life-support system.

The writing on this particular crate used one of the Asian character systems that Harry had noticed in the greenhouse section of the tank on his way back to the office. In the back of his mind, he wondered again if it was Japanese. They were the only space-faring Asian nation that was contributing to the effort to colonize Mars, with China attempting to increase its own space launch capacity and avoiding most international space ventures.

Another grunt issued from the crate as it jerked against its tether, startling Harry again. He watched in fascination for several minutes as whatever was inside the crate continued to pound against its confinement. A few times, he though he heard something vaguely resembling a voice, but ignored it. Finally, with what sounded unmistakably like a human scream of desperation, the most forceful lunge yet shook the crate and its lid popped up a few millimeters, interrupting the smoothness of the crates exterior.

A muffled exclamation which undoubtedly came from a person caused Harry to immediately retrieve his cloak and cover himself. A series of short, sharp blows from within the crate further loosened the lid. With one final lunge, the lid popped off and flew to the wall before bouncing against it and ricocheting against several other parts of the room before it began to slowly float in a slight spin.

Harry had been ready to duck the wild lid, but realized he wouldn't need to at the same moment he watched the first person he had seen in almost a month slowly float out of the formally shuddering crate. The first thing Harry thought was why Lee Jordan was sneaking aboard the _Ares. _The other stowaway's dreadlocks were almost identical to Lee's and caused a moment of disorientation for Harry that he quickly shook off. The dark skinned man, who had a somewhat asymmetrical face as if his jaw had been broken at some point, eased himself out of the crate carefully and looked around, eyes wide.

Harry's eyes were wide as well, but more from shock than any sort of wonderment. There was another stowaway, and he had no idea who had helped them or why. He needed to think, and with no concern about what his only fellow passenger, for the moment, would notice, opened the door and floated back toward the observation bubble. He didn't see the look of astonishment mixed with fear from the dreadlocked man behind him.

* * *

Finding a a place to think hadn't been too difficult, especially since Harry's mind was whirring at the implications that he was no longer alone aboard the _Ares_. With less than forty-eight hours until the First Hundred would be arriving, he knew that Hermione would be able to help him with this new puzzle. He began to wander the ship as his thoughts constantly went back to the other stowaway.

The idea that someone would try to sneak on board was not a new one. Obviously, Harry and Hermione had had the same thought and acted on it. But security was so all-encompassing that neither of them had thought it possible without magic. Possible ways to bypass the various guards and technicians crossed his mind, but none of them seamed feasible.

Several hours after he'd watched the other stowaway emerge from the crate, Harry had gone back to the farm's office, concerned that it had all been a hallucination brought on by sensory deprivation and isolation. Nothing in the office had been out of place when he slowly opened the door and slowly floated around the room under his cloak. All the crates were in place and seemingly undisturbed.

Harry slowly rotated, scrutinizing everything in the office, trying to determine if anything had been altered. Noticing nothing out of the ordinary, he glided to the closet to confirm that the man he had seen in the crate was some sort of detailed and convincing daydream so he could go to sleep. A sharp intake of breath was the only noise that escaped him as he glimpsed the frightened face of the dreadlocked man cowering in the corner of the closet. Heart pounding, Harry slowly backed away, careful to keep his feet covered by his cloak.

"Who 'dat?" asked the man in a shaky, quiet voice. His eyes were open wide, and Harry could see his pupils contracting as the light of the office poured into the closet where the man must have been hiding in darkness for the past few hours. When no one answered, the man stuck his head out of the closet, frowning at the door. He looked around the room, his eyes passing over Harry without any indication he had spotted the invisible wizard.

Grumbling to himself, the man pulled a small plastic bulb out of his pocket and floated over to the shower stall. Harry watched as he expertly filled it, reminding him of his fumbling attempts when he had first come aboard.

Having thought about what to do if this stowaway was not a figment of his imagination, Harry quietly slipped off his invisibility cloak and tucked it into his pocket. The man appeared to be around his size, though possibly a bit shorter. It was difficult to tell when their positions were perpendicular to each other. In any case, Harry had some ability to fight from his years and training as an auror, and based on the man's movements, he also had better control of himself in micro-gravity.

When the other stowaway finished filling his bulb, he grabbed a handrail and turned toward Harry. When their eyes met, neither man made a sound. Harry did his best to remain expressionless while the other man stared at him, wide-eyed, gripping the handrail so tightly his arm was vibrating. For several moments they just stared at each other before Harry realized he had been holding his breath. He sighed and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

"How long you been here?" asked the other stowaway in a strange, almost musically accented English.

Harry laughed humorlessly. "Almost three weeks. Who are you?"

A corner of the man's mouth stretched out, highlighting the asymmetry of his jaw. It wasn't quite a smirk. "I'm a stowaway. Same as you, eh?"

Harry nodded. They both relaxed but continued to stare at each other. Harry's thoughts veered wildly for a moment and he realized the other man had probably not eaten since he had been stuffed into the crate he had arrived in.

"You hungry?" he asked the man.

The half smirk contorted into a grimace. "I am."

"We'll eat, then talk. How does that sound?"

"Sounds about right, man."

* * *

A/N: This is part 1 of 2 in Chapter 1. Part two should be out sometime in the next week or so.

I need a beta. I have one lined up but this is unbetaed so far. If you spot any mistakes, or have any questions, please let me know. Don't forget to review.


	3. The First Hundred 2 of 2

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and The Mars Trilogy, by KS Robinson are not mine. Yet.

I need a beta. Please help.

* * *

**The First Hundred (Part 2 of 2)**

Desmond ate the nutrient bar Harry handed him quickly without any complaining at the taste. They'd introduced themselves, but that had been the limit of their conversation so far.

"Why are you here?" asked Harry, when it looked like Desmond had eaten his fill.

"Why are _you_ here?" echoed Desmond without looking at him, still intent on his nutrient bar.

"My best friend is one of the First Hundred. There's nothing on Earth that I'd particularly miss, so she helped me sneak on board."

"Hm," responded his new companion. "I suppose we have a bit in common, then. You want to tell me which one you talking about?"

"Not yet. Where are you from? I don't recognize your accent."

"Here and there. Firstly and lastly, Trinidad and Tobago. Port of Spain. You from London?"

Harry nodded.

"Thought so," said Desmond. "I am not so good with accents, but I spent time in England."

The two sat quietly for several minutes. Harry took a long look at the man floating in front of him. Dark brown dreadlocks which looked as if they would hang down a bit past his shoulders if they hadn't been floating about his head in the micro-gravity. His skin was a light shade of brown with no obvious ethnicity. From what he knew of the Caribbean, that wasn't unusual. Once again, Harry noticed the left side of his face was misaligned. He was quite thin, but healthy looking with a well-hidden wiry strength belied by his tightly controlled movements.

Desmond's dark brown eyes met Harry's and they looked away from each other for a moment before either spoke.

"The two of us are very foolish," said Desmond.

"No shit."

"If someone were to find us here, they could cancel the mission."

"Then we should avoid being found."

"You don't appear to be worried."

"No."

"Why is that? If they were to take us back to Earth, I have no doubt that we would spend the rest of our most likely limited days in prison."

"I'm very skilled at avoiding detection," said Harry.

"I think we both are, or we would not be having this conversation."

Harry and Desmond locked eyes for a moment and Harry knew that the man in front of him had had a much more difficult time getting onto the _Ares._ He was clearly a muggle, but the statute of secrecy was not one of the many things to worry about on a spaceship about to depart for Mars. If the two of them were to remain hidden for the next ten months, they would have to trust each other.

"I have a cloak that causes whatever is under it to be invisible."

"You were here when I got out of the crate."

"Yes."

"May I see it?" requested Desmond.

Harry agreed and pulled his invisibility cloak from his pocket. The shimmering fabric hid his hand as he unfolded it.

"Holy hell," breathed Desmond. "I've never seen..." he shook his head in wonder. "How does it work?"

"Magic." Harry waited for the reaction.

"Magic?"

With a nod, Harry pulled the cloak over his head and disappeared from view. Desmond's eyes grew wide, followed quickly by a grin.

"That's fucking fantastic! Ho! I have never seen something so glorious. How does it work? Magic you say? Hahaha! You're a madman!"

Harry couldn't help but laugh along with him, though the sound came from behind Desmond and startled the man, causing him to jerk in surprise and push himself across the office unintentionally. Harry removed the cloak, still laughing. Desmond scowled before his face lit up once more.

"It truly is magic, isn't it? I've always heard stories… On some of the smaller islands, they tell stories about witches. Not children's tales you must understand, but happenings plausible enough that made even me, a born sceptic, wonder."

"There's a large magical community in the Caribbean," agreed Harry. Desmond nodded distractedly in response.

Harry waited for the torrent of questions he had been conditioned into expecting from years of friendship with Hermione.

"So," began Desmond, "you would have me believe that there is a magical world full of witches and warlocks and voodoo?"

"Well, we call ourselves wizards, mostly. The men. As for voodoo, that's more of a philosophy than magic. I don't know much about it, to be honest."

"Right," but Desmond was already preparing his next question. "How do you do it?"

"I was born with it."

"And your parents? They were also magic?"

"Yes," answered Harry. "But not all wizards and witches are born to magical parents."

"How many magical people are there?"

"No one knows. The estimates have usually averaged between half of a percent and one percent of the population. They're about one-million of us in Britain, though we tend to have a bit higher percentage than most places."

"Why?"

"Several reasons, but it's not really all that important to this conversation."

"Alright," agreed Desmond. Harry could see the man processing all the new information extremely quickly. More quickly than he'd seen any muggle do before, and his initial impression of his fellow stowaway continued to rise.

"Is your friend a witch?"

Harry nodded and Desmond's face split into that cracked grin, once again.

"Fantastic!" Desmond exclaimed. Harry watched as the man muttered to himself for a moment. His past experiences informing muggles of the magical world were not numerous, but this was possibly the strangest, and most positively excited reaction he had encountered.

"Anymore questions?" asked Harry with a grin.

"Hundreds! Thousands!" said Desmond. "I don't even know where to begin!" He shook his head, dreadlocks snapping around in every direction in the micro-gravity. "There's plenty of time for questions. I assume this is not the way you people usually do things, telling people like me about your secret world, eh?"

"No, there's a law called 'The Statute of Secrecy' that prohibits witches and wizards from telling any non-magical person about our world."

Desmond scoffed. "Bah! Nothing is so oppressive as a secret. Do any of you magic folk follow such a senseless law?"

"They do, though it hasn't been very strictly enforced in recent years."

"Hm," was the only answer Desmond gave.

The two stowaways, by unspoken agreement, deferred all other questions and discussions until the next day. Harry set up the wall cot and Desmond slipped into the closet, where he unrolled a shiny, silver, cocoon-like sleeping bag which he fastened to the wall. Neither of them slept well as they awaited the arrival of the First Hundred.

* * *

The two men floated together in the observation bubble the next day. The First Hundred would be arriving that evening. Conversation came in fits and starts as Desmond viewed the Earth and the stars for the first time. The sight was still awe-inspiring to Harry.

"So you believe one of the storage tanks will be our salvation?" asked Desmond.

"They're the only places no one will frequent until we get closer to Mars," reasoned Harry.

"I suppose. Hiroko say she'll be able to convince the farm team to accept me. She say they can keep it to themselves. And now we have your Hermione to help."

"From what you tell me about Hiroko, I don't see them working well together," said Harry, who was reminded of Luna by Desmond's description of his proverbial guardian angel.

"Ah, you think too much about what can and cannot work. You should wait for them to speak. Yes, Hiroko is perhaps a little insane, but so am I! So are you, and so is your Hermione. We will hide in closets and storage rooms for the next year while we travel through space toward a planet with no people, no life, no dragons…"

Desmond beamed at him and continued.

"You and your witch don't know that your magic will work on Mars, so you cannot tell me that our benefactors will be unable to work together because one of them is crazy. They are probably the two craziest people we know. Besides ourselves, of course!"

Harry grinned as he took in the somewhat maniacal smile on Desmond's face.

"Where are you supposed to meet Hiroko?" asked Harry.

Desmond whistled tonelessly before answering. "She say I'll have to make do before we move out of orbit. And what of Hermione? She seems to have prepared you quite well to live on your own."

"She said she'd find me in the observation bubble tonight. It's easier for me to hide."

"That, my friend, is undeniable," cackled Desmond, barking his laughter in a way so reminiscent of Sirius that it startled Harry into a contemplative silence.

This did not go unnoticed. Desmond gave him an evaluating look before returning his attention back to the Earth outside the window.

After a brief silence, Desmond spoke without looking away from the window, "Does it seem strange to you that this may be the last time we ever lay our eyes on her?"

"Honestly?"

"I don't care for lies."

"I won't miss it," admitted Harry.

Desmond turned his head and fixed Harry with a piercing look. After a few seconds, Harry had to look away and took in the view of Earth himself. Neither spoke for some time.

Nearly an hour later, Desmond turned to Harry, who was a few meters away and staring into the infinite expanse of stars.

"There's a shuttle preparing to dock."

"Hm?" grunted Harry, who shifted so that he could see out the window from the same angle as Desmond. "Should we go back to the farm?"

"I don't know," said Desmond. "Does your AI have a schedule of arrivals?"

Harry pulled out his palm-sized computer in lieu of a reply and slowly retrieved the information. Desmond's impatience quickly changed to surprise as he watched Harry's face crease with the effort of using the small device.

"There are seven scheduled shuttles from sixteen hundred until twenty-two hundred hours, it says here. Mostly personal effects and livestock. Some birds and other animals for the atriums, too. The first of the Hundred arrive at midnight, Greenwich time."

"You have never used an AI before?" asked Desmond, ignoring Harry's recitation of the shuttles' inventories.

"I've used computers, but nothing like this. Didn't have much need for them before. They tend to bust when magic is used around them."

"I see. Do you plan to never use magic again? Computers will be fairly essential to survival on Mars."

Harry shook his head. "Hermione said there's a way to shield electronics and computers from magic use, but it's a spell that has to be used when whatever you're casting it on is completely deactivated."

"Ah, so that is why you mustn't use magic here?"

"Right," said Harry.

Once again, silence descended as they watched the shuttle match the rotation of the _Ares_ and prepare to dock. Small bursts of white gas marked the use of the craft's directional thrusters. A sense of vertigo overwhelmed Harry as the shuttle slid over the canopy of stars outside the window and he had to turn away.

"Let's go get something to eat," suggested Desmond, who had turned when he saw Harry push off toward the door.

The two of them floated in front of the door and Harry pulled out his cloak and fastened it over the two of them. Their feet showed when it both of them tried to hide under it, but thanks to the lack of gravity, they could curl into a ball if needed and stay concealed. It would become more difficult once the _Ares _started its rotation to produce Mars equivalent artificial gravity after departure in two days, but both of them were fairly short and crouching would be easy in the lower gravity. It was also a large ship, and as Desmond had said many times already, there were an almost infinite number of places to hide.

Harry floated forward slowly, mostly being guided by Desmond. He was still a bit shaken by the question about Earth. Would he miss it? There was nothing for him there, and the only person he truly cared about was due to arrive on the _Ares_ within the next ten hours. His thoughts strayed to his good-bye to Hermione in the NASA courtyard. The smell of the sea and feel of the wind was already fading from his memory and as hard as he tried, he couldn't bring himself to care. There would be life on Mars before too long. The farm team would have bamboo shoots and crops growing within a few months. The planned shelters, cramped and esoteric, wouldn't be anything exceedingly different from most of his homes throughout his life. Maybe he'd come to miss it. He'd lived and lost enough to know that it was a possibility.

Harry's thoughts were interrupted as Desmond placed a hand on his chest to stop their forward momentum.

"We're here," Desmond said in a low voice, caution due to the arrival of the shuttle imbuing itself in his voice.

They were back at the farm office. Harry sighed, wishing Hermione were already here. He wasn't yet comfortable enough to discuss his darker thoughts with his fellow stowaway.

They floated in through the door and shut it carefully. Knowing the farm crew would be arriving within the next twelve hours, the two stowaways meticulously went over every bit of the office, erasing signs of their habitation and returning it back to its original, sterile and untouched appearance.

* * *

Harry and Desmond hid under the invisibility cloak and watched the fourth shuttle unload its ten passengers into the _Ares_. The first thirty had been people they both recognized, but no one they had met. The First Hundred had all been famous before being named as the first colonists to go to Mars, but since the final selection was announced, it was almost impossible to avoid their faces, names and life stories. Harry empathized with them. He and Hermione hadn't had much time together since she had stealthily included herself in the selection process, but during the past six months since she had been chosen, she had expressed how uncomfortable the attention made her. She had also apologized, unnecessarily in Harry's opinion, to him for not understanding why he detested his own fame so vehemently.

He had been drifting through his memories when he saw her. Hermione's hair was cut short, practical in the micro-gravity, and only the thickness revealed the bushy hair he had been accustomed to for the past thirty-five years. Her face looked younger than the last time he'd seen her. The worry and apprehension that had been clearly expressed that afternoon in Florida when they had last spoken was gone, and the few wrinkles she'd developed by the age of forty-seven seemed to have melted away thanks to the lack of gravity. As with the first three groups, several of the members of the First Hundred seemed a bit green or pasty white as they experienced nausea from being in space for the first time. Hermione's face was a bit puffier, but that seemed to be the only effect from the micro-gravity.

Hermione, of course, couldn't see them. Harry and Desmond watched the newcomers slowly pull themselves along the passageway, using hand holds and a mesh-like net that covered what would be the floor and ceiling when the _Ares _began its rotation to create a Martian equivalent gravity. Some of them clearly had experience in space, or in Hermione's case experience with simulated micro-gravity. However, most were using far too much force to pull themselves along, which had resulted in several sprains and at least one person, who Harry recognized as Saxifrage Russel, crashing face first into the wall. The man had grunted in pain, but waved off assistance from the technicians guiding them toward the infirmary, where the First Hundred would each undergo a short exam to verify there had been no ill effects from the shuttle flight or micro-gravity. He pulled himself along much more cautiously afterwards.

The last person out of Hermione's shuttle was obviously Hiroko Ai, the only Asian member of the First Hundred. She had a small smile on her youthful face as she peered out from the airlock. Harry felt Desmond stiffen a bit before relaxing as his fellow stowaway took in the sight of his friend. Or lover. Harry wasn't quite clear on which, or if she was both. She was the youngest of the First Hundred, which he knew from the endless stream of information about the mission on Earth, but it would have been obvious even if he hadn't. Her hair was cut short like Hermione's, but shone inkily in the artificial sunlight of the _Ares _passageways. Harry could see that her smooth, silk-like skin didn't need the absence of gravity to hide wrinkles. She could have easily been mistaken for a university student instead of one of the world leaders in hydro-agriculture and enclosed biological life-support systems design.

After the ten colonists, plus the technicians assisting them, had filed disorderly through the passageway, Harry and Desmond made their way to a storage room near the 'front' of the _Ares_, only a few minutes from the observation bubble where Harry would meet Hermione when she finished her medical exam and could get away to be on her own. He and Desmond decided to give her an hour and then wait in the bubble, hiding under the cloak, for Hermione to arrive.

She was floating by the window, staring at Earth, when they arrived. She turned at the sound of the door opening and stared right at them as Harry shut the door and locked it.

"Harry?" she said. She looked exhausted and puffy-faced.

Harry and Desmond revealed themselves to Hermione whose face flickered between surprise, pleasure, shock and fear before finally settling on stunned.

"Hello, Hermione."

"Who are you?" Hermione didn't even acknowledge Harry's greeting as she focused a sharp look on Desmond.

"Desmond Hawkins. It's a pleasure."

"What are you doing here?"

"I snuck aboard, just like Harry, here."

Hermione closed her eyes tightly for a moment, processing this new information. Harry instantly recognized the look. He knew that her mind was preparing a list of questions she felt would get her the information she needed to wrap her mind around such a sudden, unexpected alteration to their plan.

Before she could begin, Desmond spoke. "I know you have many questions for me and about how I got here, yes?"

Hermione nodded and opened her mouth. Desmond continued, not allowing her to begin her interrogation. "That's fair, but we don't have time for that right now. I have questions for you, too. For both of you. We need to decide on a plan, though, eh?"

Harry took over and said, "Hermione, he knows about magic. I told him. We're going to work together, and Hiroko Ai is going to help Desmond and probably me, too. He thinks she would be quite pleased to learn about the existence of magic."

Hermione sputtered. "You can't just go around telling all of these people about magic, Harry!"

He raised his hands placatingly. "We're going to have to tell some people, Hermione. There's only going to be a hundred and two of us for who knows how many years."

She sighed. "I know, I know. It's just so soon, and this is just a bit surprising." She turned to Desmond. "Hiroko snuck you aboard?"

Desmond nodded.

"She reminds me of Luna," said Hermione.

Harry looked at Desmond triumphantly but was ignored.

"Is that bad?" asked Desmond.

"Not particularly. She may be even more intelligent. That helps me overlook some of her…quirks."

"Are you one to judge her sanity?" asked Desmond seriously, with a small frown.

Hermione laughed. "Hardly. I've been questioning my own sanity since I met Harry. You think she'll help us?"

"No doubt," he said, a grin forming on his face. "But she will ask for help from us, as well. She hasn't told me what she's planning for Mars, but I can guess most of it won't be part of the official mission."

"I think everyone of us has some plans that aren't included in the official mission," countered Hermione, which elicited a bark of laughter from Desmond. She smiled and Harry grinned slightly.

"We're going to stay in Storage Tank One in Torus C until Desmond can make contact with Hiroko after the launch," Harry said, finally gaining Hermione's attention.

"That sounds fine," said Hermione. "You'll only be a couple of tanks away from the main farm tank, right?"

Both men nodded and Hermione smiled weakly. "You both look terrible, by the way. I've brought a few more potions. Some pepper up, calming draught and general nutritional supplements. I didn't bring any dreamless sleep. You'll need to be able to wake up in case of emergency."

"Right," said Harry as he accepted a bag which he assumed was full of the mentioned potions.

"I also managed to finally figure out how to shrink the potion supplies and as many seeds and spores as I could get a hold of, though there was no way to bring any live magical creatures. They die if you shrink them, even if they're under stasis. Couldn't find a way around that."

"Makes sense," said Harry.

"I'll do my best to bring you two some food as soon as I can, but you're going to have to go hungry some of the voyage. I just won't be able to smuggle enough food for two people without being noticed."

"We'll be fine, Hermione."

"Indeed," said Desmond. "I believe we shall be able to procure ourselves some food without too much difficulty once we're underway."

"Good. That's good," murmured Hermione. She bit her bottom lip and looked at Harry.

"I'm fine," said Harry, taking a guess.

She nodded. "Me too, just nervous." She bit her lip again for a moment before launching herself toward Harry, which resulted in the two of them spinning head over foot until they both hit the wall feet-first and Harry carefully pushed them back toward Desmond, who was grinning his cracked grin at the two friends' reunion.

"I was so worried!" exclaimed Hermione.

Harry did his best to shrug in the micro-gravity. "I was bored most of the time, to tell the truth. It's a big ship, but with no one to talk to there's only so many things to occupy the time." He thought for a second. "The atriums are strange in this gravity. It's almost like flying without a broom. I suppose I spent most of my free time just exploring. Finding places nobody would be likely to go."

She smiled tiredly for a moment and then breathed deeply. Neither of them noticed that Desmond's face had gone slack at the mention of flying brooms. His mouth opened as if he wanted to say something, but he shut it with a quiet click. Hermione was saying good-bye.

"I'll do my best to find you two after the first comprehensive status check following the launch, okay? If you need to find me, my room is number twelve in Torus B."

"Fine, I'll see you soon," said Harry.

"Sleep well," added Desmond.

"Goodnight, guys," said Hermione, who expertly pushed herself toward the door and quietly exited the observation bubble, leaving the two stowaways alone.

* * *

On December 21, 2026, the largest spacecraft ever constructed began to accelerate toward the fourth planet from the Sun. It would take just under ten months, and at 40,000 kilometers per hour, the _Ares _would be traveling faster than any manned spacecraft had before. Several minutes went by as the _Ares_ accelerated and Harry and Desmond were having a bit of trouble with their makeshift gravity couches.

Makeshift was a bit of an overstatement, thought Harry, as the two of them tightly held on to the top of a harness system that Hiroko had left in the farm office's closet for them, though they still hadn't seen her. It looked closer to an acromantula's web than any sort of seating apparatus, but it was what they had, and the only other options likely involved their own increased weight crushing important parts of their anatomy. The harness sagged more and more until the back of Harry's head was brushing up against the wall of the closet. He shut his eyes, hoping the acceleration would end soon. He heard Desmond grunt and with an herculean effort, turned his head and saw his fellow stowaway's head was also being forced against the wall. A few of his dreadlocks were pinned between his skull and the wall, which was obviously uncomfortable.

"Don't move," gasped Harry.

"Can't," responded Desmond. "No worries."

For several more silent moments, the _Ares_ continued to vibrate and rattle as a few unsecured items darted around the temporary floor of the office outside the closet. Then, abruptly, the pressure vanished and the vibrations ceased. They floated in their harness and Desmond tangled his arm while attempting to straighten his hair. The two worked slowly to extricate themselves from the tangled web or nylon and some sort of stretchy aluminum foil-like material that neither of them had been able to identify.

They were finally able to disassemble it and roll it into a ball slightly smaller than a snitch. Harry was amazed and it showed on his face.

"What?" asked Desmond, who was rubbing at the back of his head.

"It gets so small," said Harry in wonderment.

"Eh? Of course it does. We may not have magic to shrink things, but we have our ways!" Desmond hooted a few times in amusement and Harry had the decency to blush. He was acting like some pureblood who'd never met a muggle. He shook his head and tried to ignore the constantly repeating realization that there were so many things he needed to catch up on and learn to survive on Mars.

The two of them spent the next several hours waiting for the lateral control rockets to begin firing. When they finally did, the only indication was a slight pull toward what was suddenly the floor of the closet. For several minutes the force of the pseudo-gravity increased until Harry and Desmond were standing unsteadily in a suddenly smaller-seeming closet. Harry had been on the _Ares_ for just over three weeks, and his body was already exhausted from the acceleration earlier.

Desmond helped him to sit on the floor and stood looking down at him in concern.

"I'll be fine," said Harry. "I just need a few days to get used to it. I've been here long enough for my muscles to atrophy a bit."

Desmond nodded, but still looked worried. "When do you want to move to the storage tank?"

"I guess now would be a good time for some pepper-up," he mumbled. He asked Desmond to hand him the bag Hermione had given them and pulled out a small vile of light blue liquid with thousands of small bubbles swirling, rising and popping at an incredible rate.

"That's an energetic little drink," remarked Desmond who was peering at the vial as Harry prepared to open it.

"You have no idea," said Harry. With a deep breath he popped the top off the vial and turned it upside down. The pepper-up flowed down his throat, causing a tickling sensation. It was unusually palatable and Harry reminded himself to thank Hermione for brewing it herself as the potion began to take effect.

"Ah!" a startled yell died in Desmond's throat. "Holy fuck!" he continued, trying to keep his voice down. The sight of steam shooting out of Harry's ears like an overheated kettle was only his second experience with magic and it was not as pleasing as the invisibility cloak.

"Sorry," said Harry, "I should have probably warned you about that. Most potions don't do things like that.

"What do other potions do?" he asked warily.

"Well, they're used for almost everything, I suppose. This is pepper-up and it's usually used for minor illnesses and exhaustion." Harry stood up and finally was able to ascertain that he was an inch or so taller than Desmond, which made the islander around five foot five inches. He thought to convert it to centimeters in his mind, but he'd never really been bothered to learn the conversion rate. Yet another thing he'd need to be sure to learn in the next ten months.

"Can I ask you a favor?" said Harry when the two of them had secured a space large enough for the two of them in one of the storage rooms a few tanks away from the farm.

"Of course."

"I'll teach you as much as I can about magic if you'll teach me, too."

"Teach you what?" asked Desmond.

"Anything you can think of that will help me survive."

"I see," said Desmond. "Such as?"

"How many inches are in a centimeter?"

Desmond stared at him for several moments before his dark eyes began to twinkle in a way that immediately caused Harry to blush. It was the twinkle of someone feeling affectionately superior and Harry knew the laughter was coming before Desmond did as the dreadlocked man began to cackle madly and laugh so hard that his breaths came in loud, sucking gasps.

Several minutes later found both of them wiping tears of mirth from their cheeks.

"Yes, yes, I'll teach you, man! Oh dear! I haven't laughed that hard since my father passed. You and I, Harry, we are going to become very good friends. I know this. Come on, let's find Hermione and get some dinner."

The two pulled the invisibility cloak over themselves and walked carefully in the Mars-like gravity toward Hermione's room.

* * *

A/N: Here's part two of Chapter 1. Hope you enjoy it. If you haven't figured it out yet, this is going to be a pretty slow moving story. I can't even think of claiming it will be as epic as the actual trilogy by KSR, but I'm going to do my best.

And please review. Big thanks to the people who have already reviewed. They've all been excellent, well written and thought out, and I truly appreciate it. However, if you just want to write 'I like it," that'd be nice, too.


	4. Martians 1 of 2

**Martians (Part 1 of 2)**

_The first time the little red people met a human was long before John Boone set foot on Mars. Almost a thousand years ago, a towering figure arrived with a faint cracking sound on the edge of Pavonis Mons' caldera. He scared the little red people something terrible and even though he could sense them scurrying around his feet, Merlin Ambrosius was unable to actually see them for some time. He spent weeks popping around Mars and saw the destruction left behind by the battle between Big Man and Paul Bunyan. Merlin liked order and decided he would try to clean up a bit. He started in the northern hemisphere and managed to clear much of the debris before a chorus of voices began shouting in his ear._

"_What are you doing?" asked the chorus of tiny voices._

"_I am cleaning up this mess," answered Merlin. "This planet is most untidy."_

"_But this is the way we like it," responded the chorus and Merlin abruptly dropped the debris he was clearing in a large ring around himself, which is where we really got the Great Escarpment from, and looked down._

"_Who are all of you?" he asked in a kindly manner._

"_We are the little red people," they said. "We've lived on Mars since Big Man and Paul Bunyan and his ox, Blue finished their fight."_

"_I see," lied Merlin._

_Merlin and the little red people spent quite awhile sizing each other up. What the little ones lacked in height they made up for in mass. Merlin knew his eyes were lying to him about their power and sensed he should make friends of these creatures._

"_You feel strange," said the chorus in a hushed tone._

"_You feel big," said Merlin._

_Billions of tiny laughs answered him and all of Mars seemed to titter at the irony._

"_Why did you come here?" asked the little red people. It took Merlin a few minutes to think of a good response._

"_I suppose I just needed to get away and see somewhere new. Do you understand?"_

"_No," responded the chorus._

"_People always want something from me."_

"_What do they want from you?" asked the little red people._

"_They want my knowledge. They want my magic. They want to be as powerful as I, but there is no one on Earth who I trust with any of it."_

_It was then that Merlin and the little red people shared an epiphany. He looked down at them and they stared back up at him before coming to a silent agreement._

_Merlin was only able to transfer a infinitesimally small amount of his magic into one of the little red people, and only one at a time. It took several decades before each of the little red people were able to feel the magic swirling inside them. Their magic was weak, however. Each of them would have been hard pressed to levitate a feather. Together, though…_

_And together is how the little red people like to work._

* * *

Harry unlocked his helmet and pulled it off his walker's neck ring. Desmond, who was almost bouncing in the seat next to him, had done the same several minutes before.

"You're sure this is a good idea?"

"Ah, my friend, you worry far too much."

"All I'm saying is that someone may notice there's a rover missing. Not to mention two walkers."

"And Hiroko and Hermione have both assured you, multiple times, that they have taken care of things."

Harry sighed but nodded and the two of them went through the checklist to start-up the rover. It was a big, box-like thing with two meter high wheels. Inside were three small rooms: a kitchenette, a small toilet and a living room which also contained the fold-out bed that they would be sharing for the next few months. It was a scout rover, and only meant for two people at the most. The windows were small and thick, but clear. They would have no trouble seeing what was out there when it became light.

It would be the first time either of them had truly seen Mars. Hermione had been adamant that they stay hidden away as they approached the planet back on the _Ares_, and since they had landed they had been shuffled from hiding place to hiding place, always at night and always swiftly guided by Hermione or Hiroko or one of the farm crew. They'd been on Mars for a week already, but seen only the inside of a few of the spare trailer-like shelters that had been sent ahead of the colonists the year before.

It had been, Harry thought, one of the most boring but terrifying weeks of his life. He was reminded of the search for the horcruxes. Day after day of hiding in their small tent with only Hermione and Ron for company. Now it was Hermione and Desmond, sitting with him in small closets and stuffy, dusty shelters. The fines, small fragments of the rust colored dust that rose up every time a slight breeze brushed the ground, were able to get into everything. Ann Clayborne, the head of the geological survey team, had explained to Hermione who had explained to Harry and Desmond that fines were so small, around a micron in diameter, they could slip through seals that even CO2 couldn't penetrate. The first week the First Hundred had been on Mars had been a week of malfunctioning instruments and machine stoppages. Hermione had done her best to contain her frustration, but had exploded into bursts of hissed complaints when some of her delicate scientific instruments were devastated by fines. She was far from the only one having difficulties.

While they had still been en-route to Mars, Desmond once asked her what exactly she was hoping to work on once they arrived on Mars. Her response had not been very detailed.

"I plan to work with materials and magical research," she'd said as the three of them huddled together in her room in Torus B.

"What kind of materials?" asked Desmond.

"I don't really know, exactly. Not yet," said Hermione. "With this group, anything is possible. There could be unthought of advancements in materials science within months of our arrival."

"And magical research?"

"We know so little about how magic works. Most witches and wizards just use it. Harry and I learned the same lessons that Harry's great-great-great grandparents learned. And probably their great-great-great grandparents, as well," explained Hermione. Harry had rolled his eyes and nodded in agreement. He'd constantly been frustrated with the lack of any meaningful progress in magical education as his children began to attend Hogwarts and learned the same lessons he had fifteen years earlier.

"Are you worried that your magic may not work on Mars?" asked Desmond, who had had the same discussion with Harry. Hermione gave him the same answer, though it was a bit more informative than the 'No' Harry had given.

"Not really. Not anymore, at least. Before we left Earth, I had some concerns but when Harry arrived on the _Ares, _and then when I did, we've been able to feel our magic. It's been almost four months now, and we're about halfway to Mars. If we were going to lose our magic, I think we would have lost it by now," Hermione had said.

He was shaken from his memories by Desmond speaking to him from the driver's seat of the rover. "You want to pull up that map, man?"

Harry nodded and brought their proposed route up onto the main screen of the rover's control panel. He'd grown much more comfortable and skilled with computers since meeting Desmond, who had forced him to not only use his AI to search for useful information they would need on Mars, but also to play games. Desmond delighted in beating Harry at various computer games as much as Ron had with chess.

After several minutes the two of them had finished the checklist to start the rover and were sitting in their seats, waiting on a message from Hermione, who would tell them when it was safe for them to depart. As long as no one saw them, she had said, the rover would not even be known to be missing. They would need only twenty minutes or so to drive out far enough to be under the horizon and out of the sight of Underhill, the newly official name of the colony . Then the entire planet would be their playground, or so Desmond had exclaimed excitedly. Their plan was to drive east until sunrise and then stop the rover and shut everything off. At that point, Harry would finally be able to unshrink his bag and retrieve his wand. The thought was making his magic as jumpy as a puppy that had been locked in a cage all night, and it was ready to get out and play. The tension and anticipation Harry was feeling was palpable, and Desmond continued to glance at him as they waited for Hermione's signal. Harry realized he was nearly vibrating as both his hands and feet tapped and twitched in a rapid-fire rhythm.

Hermione's voice, small sounding from the intercom speaker and scratchy from lack of sleep and too much canned air, finally set them into motion. Desmond eased the rover forward and the huge tires quickly found the grooves of previous rovers that they planned to mimic until they passed the recently located nuclear reactor. It had been named Chernobyl by Arkady Bogdanov, who was still in orbit with the Phobos crew. They were constructing an orbital space station out of the moon, which would be handling most traffic in and out of the Mars system.

Desmond's thoughts were apparently mirroring Harry's as they passed the power station.

"That thing is a terrible idea," said Desmond, shaking his head.

"What? Chernobyl?" asked Harry.

"Indeed," confirmed Desmond. "Though I must give credit to Bogdanov for the name. Of all the possibilities for power generation, they send up that Rickover beast. It will produce enough electricity to power a hundred Underhills! It can produce enough radiation to kill us all, as well. They could have more easily sent us the equipment for wind farms. There are at least three members of the First Hundred who are experienced in geothermal design. Bah! The thought processes of corporations are often impossible to decipher."

"How much more expensive is the Rickover?" asked Harry.

"I have no idea. I've never been one for counting money." Desmond turned his crooked grin on Harry, who rolled his eyes.

"They have to send us uranium to fuel it, right?"

"Very good, but not quite," responded Desmond. Basic physics had been one of the subjects Desmond had been attempting to teach Harry over the past ten months.

Desmond continued, keeping his eyes on the somewhat darker stretch of regolith in front of the rover which indicated the packed down and rock cleared paths of previous rovers. "Uranium exists on Mars. We haven't found any large concentrations of it yet, but it's only been a week and Clayborne is the only one who has been out further than Chernobyl. The thing we can't make at the moment is the fuel rods, among other things. Even if we find a huge bloody chunk of it sitting around a couple of kilometers away, there's no way we would be able to manufacture what we need for the Rickover."

Harry nodded, consciously not snickering at Desmond' use of the word 'bloody', a Britishism he seemed to enjoy.

"So the UN, even if they can't come up and get us, can still turn off the lights?" asked Harry.

"And the air-miners and life-support," said Desmond. "Basically, regardless of what Roko says, we're still working for the UN and whoever is truly paying the bills."

Silence followed Desmond's statement and the two stowaways left each other to their own thoughts. The plume of steam from Chernobyl rose above the Rickover power plant, visible only as an outline of inky black in the otherwise star-filled sky. There were almost as many stars visible from the surface of the planet as from the _Ares, _and they were sharper and clearer than seen from Earth. The atmosphere was not thick enough to make them twinkle.

Harry eventually dozed off in his chair and was awakened by Desmond softly shaking his shoulder and muttering his name.

"What's going on?" asked Harry, rubbing the bleariness from his eyes and running a hand through his hair.

"Sunrise is in thirty minutes," said Desmond. "Do you want to go outside?"

Harry nodded and the two of them reattached their gloves and boots. They were still wearing most of the suits, which took too much time and effort to take off and put back on for the length of their early morning drive. Harry clicked his helmet into place and stepped into the airlock. He switched on his suits heating system and felt the diamond pattern burn into his skin. The suits they used were not the easily recognizable suits used for normal spaceflight, but specially designed for use on Mars. The idea of the colonists, many of whom were not trained or lacked experience in construction, trying to build a colony on a new planet while using the bulky rigs that had been in use for the past sixty years was ludicrous. John Boone and the other astronauts from the first mission to Mars had tested them out several times and found them extremely helpful. Instead of containing the entire body inside an airtight envelope of breathable atmosphere, the walkers used by the colonists only provided air to a person's head. Below the neck, the body was covered in a diamond patterned suit which helped to compress the wearer's body so that the lack of pressure from the Martian atmosphere wouldn't cause any explosive decompressions. If the suit was damaged, and part of the wearer's body was exposed to the Martian atmosphere, only the exposed skin would bruise. It could lead to severe injuries, but the chances of death were reduced exponentially.

The air cycled out and Harry opened the outer door of the airlock. He could feel the chill instantly as the diamond patterned heating elements of his suit battled with the frigid temperatures of the Martian night. Alternating heat and coldness on his skin gave Harry a strange feeling of duality while his attention was focused on his feet crunching through the crystallized frozen ground. He felt more than saw cracks radiate outward as his feet impacted the ice-like layer of fines and sand with each step.

"What are you doing?" came Desmond's voice into Harry's ears. The intercom gave their conversation an unsettling intimacy with the other's voice in their ear as if they were being whispered to. Harry paused. He'd been walking slowly, concentrating on each step as if it would make it more real to him that he was standing on another planet. It was the first time he'd truly felt that he wasn't experiencing some strange adventure back on Earth. Apparently, even the different gravity hadn't been enough to convince his subconscious he was standing on another planet.

Looking up, he saw the sky was starting to lighten. There were still hundreds of stars, but the pitch-black night sky was starting to fade to an opaque purple dawn. It was not a color natural to Earth's sky and Harry's retinas stung and his eyes watered as he gazed unblinkingly upwards. Neither of them spoke as the eastern edge of the sky, the direction in which they were heading, started to brighten noticeably. The purplish hue began to sharpen into a beige gray, not that different from a sunrise on a cloudy day back in Britain. Harry took a moment to glance at the landscape surrounding him, lowering his eyes to the seemingly endless plane of rocks scattered so uniformly to seem almost unnatural. They sat like shadows on the surface, the morning light still hiding under the shortened horizon. He could see the sky lightening where soon the sun, much smaller than it looked from Earth, would appear and warm the planet to several degrees below the freezing point of water.

"Hey!" shouted Desmond, startling Harry out of his observations.

"What?" asked Harry, wishing he could rub his abused ears through his helmet.

The other stowaway scampered over to where Harry was standing, dancing over small cracks and fissures in the frozen ground and darting around rocks and boulders with an animal-like grace. He seemed almost at home in the Martian gravity, and for some reason Harry's magic began surging and throbbing once again, as if jealous.

Desmond reached him and pointed toward the horizon where the sun would soon be. "You see that star right there? It's just above that hill. Or crater? I have no earthly idea what it is, but it's a rise, yeah?"

Harry followed his finger and spotted the rise Desmond was pointing to, then looked above it. "There are a few stars there. Which one?"

"The blue one!"

"What?" asked Harry reflexively even as he spotted the faint blue star. It seemed to be the only one in the entire sky that was twinkling.

"Is that Earth?" asked Harry.

Desmond cackled his mad laugh and then howled, though Harry was prepared this time and lowered the volume on his suit radio.

"It must be!" exclaimed Desmond who was hopping from foot to foot with the joy of discovery.

Harry was too stunned to move, as if he were under a full-body bind. He didn't know how long he stared at the twinkling blue star, but eventually the sun rose over the shortened horizon and Earth winked out of existence. Ripping his eyes away from the smaller, but still fantastically bright sun, Harry took in his surroundings. The sky was now a light peach color, though it was almost red to the still darkened west. The rust colored ground which covered a majority of the planet's surface stretched to the edge of Harry's vision in every direction with thousands of uniquely shaped and colored rocks that were generally a bit darker than the surface. The range of colors they could see ranged from an almost blinding white surrounding the sun to burgundy and black boulders shaped by millennia of ceaseless wind and sand erosion. Shades of red dominated everything else.

"This is amazing," Harry nearly whispered. The only answer was a grunting agreement from Desmond as the two slowly rotated; trying to see everything they had been missing for the past week.

"You ready?" asked Harry.

Desmond started and spoke without turning. "I suppose. You're certain this will work?"

"Hermione said it got pretty cold but we'll have enough air for ten minutes. If I can't finish the spell by then, I'll just try again later."

"That was not a very reassuring answer."

"Now you're worrying too much. Yes, I'm certain. We'll be fine. I feel like my magic is jumping around inside me," said Harry, who had explained the feeling of magic to Desmond while still on the _Ares_.

"Has anyone ever told you that you are absolutely terrible at reassuring people?"

"Thanks. Why don't you go shut off the rover so I can start?"

Desmond was muttering to himself as he reentered the rover, though Harry couldn't understand any of it. A few minutes later, Desmond manually opened the airlock and almost skipped back to Harry, a grin of anticipation easily visible through his faceplate.

"Everything is powered down. Do your thing."

Harry nodded and recited the incantation in his mind several times as he pulled his wand from a pocket in the leg of his walker.

"Okay. I'm going to cast the spell. Turn off your AI and walker, now."

Desmond and Harry both shut off their AIs and walkers. The constant hum of static from the radios and the whoosh of oxygen from their air tanks vanished. Harry felt more physically alone than he could have ever imagined. He gulped a breath of already stale air and focused on the spell.

Harry didn't notice Desmond watching him with great interest. He didn't think about the barrier between his wand and his skin or the strangely colored sky. Barely speaking the incantation, Harry felt the magic in his arm and fingers more strongly than any time since he first purchased it with Hagrid in Diagon Ally on his eleventh birthday. The tingling warmth spread from his wand hand up to his shoulder. Harry felt a surge of strange energy focus in his chest and with the next beat of his heart, the energy shot down his arm and exploded from his wand in a tightly focused, red beam of light. Desmond's eyes widened as he watched Harry seem to glow momentarily and he let out an involuntary yelp of surprise when the beam of red light shot from Harry's wand. A bubble of energy, visually appearing as almost a red film, expanded rapidly from the rover. It grew larger and larger until it towered over them, and Desmond frantically wondered if the others could see it at Underhill. Just as he was beginning to panic, the bubble formed cracks so numerous they would be impossible to count before it seemed to shatter and dissolve in the light Martian wind. Getting over his initial shock, Desmond was so busy trying to see if there had been any physical effect on the rover that it took him most of a minute to realize Harry was crumpled lifelessly on the ground.


	5. Martians 2 of 2

**Martians (Part 2 of 2)**

Hermione was helping Rose pack her trunk for her first year at Hogwarts. Ron was in the kitchen, fixing a larger than necessary breakfast. He always did, she thought to herself with a smile as she smelled the bacon wafting up the stairs. Her husband had turned his love of food into a Molly Weasley-ish ability to cook deliciously huge meals. Hugo popped into the room to let his mother and sister know that breakfast was waiting. He was still pouting that he would have to wait another two years before starting at Hogwarts.

"Mum, what's that?" asked Rose. Hermione glanced up and saw she had moved to the window and was staring at something.

She joined her daughter at the window and her jaw dropped. A huge wall of red light was speeding through London, engulfing the skyline. Buildings seemed to dissolve into a fine red dust as the wall of light passed through them. She absently noticed there were no people in the street. No cars, no busses. Nothing. The city was empty and somehow Hermione knew it was normal. Rose had started to cry as Hugo and Ron entered her bedroom and joined the two of them at the window, staring at the red wall as it seemed to pivot and head straight for their house. She saw the park down the street from them vanish except for a single brownish, red boulder that seemed to be flying directly towards the window where her family was standing. She turned to Ron who was gazing at her with a wistful look.

"Harry did it again," he whispered to her so the children couldn't hear.

"Did what?" she asked, the familiar feeling of wanting to _know_ making her tremble.

"The impossible," he answered.

Hermione tore her gaze away from her husband's face and glanced back out the window. The red wall of light had completely erased London and all she could see was a red desert strewn with rocks of all shapes and sizes, many of them similar in appearance to the large boulder which was almost upon them.

She turned to her husband as he spoke with a regretful sadness she had never heard from him before. "Hermione, you need to wake up now."

"What?" The boulder was blocking their view out the window and the room had turned dark, with only an almost imperceptible red glow allowing her to see Ron's face.

"_Wake up!"_

Hermione shot up in bed, the lighter gravity of Mars resulting in a slight feeling of weightlessness as she rose above her mattress momentarily before bouncing slightly as she settled down.

The familiar feeling of being woken by a nightmare still made her heart beat quickly and she took a few deep breaths, doing her best not to wake the others in the trailer. She was rarely able to remember her dreams, but she was fairy certain her family had been in this one. Not an unusual occurrence. She rubbed her face vigorously, trying to wake fully.

Her thoughts shifted to Harry and Desmond, as they had often did. She hoped the two of them were doing well in the unexplored outback east of Underhill in their stolen rover, and that Harry was able to successfully cast the spell to shield electronics from magic. Standing slowly, still not used to the gravity, Hermione went into the small kitchenette to make a cup of tea. She looked out the small port-hole window as she did every morning, still amazed that she was on another planet. This morning a different feeling flowed through her as she took in the vision of various shades of rusty reds and oranges that made up the landscape of the first human settlement on Mars. A quick flash of memory. Ron saying Harry's name.

"Wake up," she whispered to herself, remembering the last moment of her dream. A wave of energy slammed into her, throwing Hermione across the trailer into the opposite wall. She moaned in pain before darkness overtook her.

* * *

"Harry! Wake up! Come on, man. Don't do this. Get up," Desmond was pleading with an unconscious Harry after dragging him back into the rover.

"Useless magic," he mumbled to himself as he removed Harry's helmet and propped him up against the wall next to the airlock. He was breathing, at least, Desmond realized in relief. He slapped the wizard in the face. When that did nothing, he picked up the helmet, holding it over Harry, and aimed the water nozzle and squeezed, dribbling water onto Harry's face, and then down the back of his neck.

Harry's eyes flew open and he gasped, startling Desmond, who fell back and leaned against the wall across from Harry. He watched the wizard take several quick deep breaths as his wild eyes looked around, obviously seeing nothing. Finally, Harry focused on Desmond.

"What happened?"

"Fuck if I know," responded Desmond with some heat. "You cast you magic spell and a big red bubble appeared, got real big and then popped."

"It popped?"

Desmond shook his head. "That's what it looked like. I don't know how all this works. Was that supposed to happen?"

"I don't think so. Did it work?"

"I suppose. My walker turned back on, I haven't tried the rover, yet. You want to try doing some more of your magic to make sure, eh?"

"Probably a good idea." Harry pulled out his wand and pointed it at Desmond, who tensed up in fright.

"Don't worry, I'm just going to clean you off. If the spell worked, everything should be fine."

"And if it didn't?" asked Desmond.

"If it didn't, we're going to have to find you another walker."

"This won't hurt, will it?"

"You wont feel a thing. I'm only going to cast a _scourgify _on your suit, not your body."

"Okay," said Desmond with clenched teeth, not caring about the name of the spell. "Do it."

The shorter man was still tense, but Harry was used to muggles being slightly nervous when they were still unfamiliar with magic and cast the spell silently. The thin layer of red dust that had caked itself on Desmond's walker vanished and the suit and helmut looked as good as new.

"There you go, nice and clean," said Harry with a small grin. "Still working?"

Desmond checked his wristpad, which chirped and beeped in response. He grinned his crooked grin at Harry. "Well done. What's next?"

Harry slowly stood up and stumbled into the living unit of the rover, removing his walker. Desmond did the same and the two of them entered the driver's compartment.

"Let's turn this beast on and see what's out there," said Harry. Desmond nodded in agreement and restarted the rover. It rumbled awake and various screens flickered to life. They smiled at each other before Desmond began checking that everything was in working order.

"It seems fine. Want to try another spell?" There was an eagerness in his voice that Harry couldn't remember hearing before. He decided the demonstration of a harmless transfiguration would increase Desmond's growing appreciation for magic. Harry pulled out a nutrient bar from his pocket and placed it on the dashboard of the rover.

"What do you feel like for breakfast?" he asked Desmond.

"What can you make?"

Harry shrugged. "Pretty much anything. Corned beef hash alright?"

"Alright," said Desmond, still sounding unsure.

Harry nodded and waved his wand. The tasteless food bar, which the two of them had become thoroughly sick of, was transfigured into a plate of delicious smelling breakfast meat. A wide eyed Desmond stared at it for several seconds before remembering the rover. They both checked out the rover's systems, which all seemed to be fine, and smiled at each other.

"I'll go get some forks," said Desmond as he stood up and walked back to the small kitchenette where they stored their food. It wasn't a true kitchen, but a set of drawers held enough food for both of them to last several months, as well as some cooking implements and utensils, a sauce pan for the large amounts of noodles they carried that were recommended due to the high content of carbohydrates, and a microwave.

The two of them ate in silence for several minutes before Desmond asked the expected question.

"So it looks and tastes like corned beef, but it's actually that nutrient bar?"

"Yeah, and it still retains the nutrients that the bar had. It just tastes much better." Harry grinned at the stunned look on Desmond's face.

"Why don't you eat this way all the time? It seems much healthier than eating actual food."

"Some people do," Harry admitted. "But I actually enjoy cooking. I'm pretty good at it, so I tend to make food the muggle way." He smirked a bit. "I might cheat sometimes, though."

Desmond smiled around a mouthful of food and swallowed. "I think I could get used to having you around, my friend."

Outside the rover, the sun had risen about a quarter of the way into the sky, bathing the two stowaways and their rover in the unearthly martian light. Harry finished his portion of transfigured nutrient bar and gazed out the windshield. The sky was a peach color with thin, wispy clouds that looked close but he knew from Desmond's tutelage were actually around twenty kilometers over their heads. An occasional bit of red dust got caught in the thin martian wind, streaming out like a tiny comet's tail.

Desmond jumped, startled as his wrist began to beep. Hiroko and Hermione would only contact them in case of emergency. He raised his arm so that he could read the newly arrived message.

"Harry, something happened to Hermione." His accent thickened as he got more concerned. "'Roko just send me this message. She say something happened this morning and she was thrown into the wall in her trailer."

Harry had frozen.

"Harry, you want to go back?" asked Desmond, trying to get the now catatonic wizard to respond.

"Yeah," Harry shook himself. "Let's go back. Did Hiroko say if she was okay?"

Desmond checked his wrist again and finished reading the message. "She's fine. Slight concussion, but Vlad Taneev is with her. He's the best," he tried to reassure his friend. "They would not've sent him if he wasn't."

Harry nodded and vanished the now empty breakfast plate. Desmond almost squeaked he was so startled but focused on preparing to return to Underhill. It would take them almost five hours to get there and then they would have to wait until darkness before they could risk getting close enough to be seen or entering the clinic trailer.

When he mentioned this to Harry the wizard had shaken his head. "I can make us invisible. It won't be a problem."

Desmond blinked once. "Of course you can. Do it and we can go now."

Harry stood up and cast a disillusionment charm on the rover, then sat back down.

"Is that it?" asked Desmond.

"We can still see us. Took me awhile to figure out how to alter the spell. It'd be difficult to drive if you couldn't see the controls. Let's go."

Desmond decided to ask about the concept of 'altering spells' another time as the two set off to find out what had happened to Hermione.

* * *

A rhythmic beeping was the first sound Hermione heard as she regained consciousness. She tried to open her eyes but the first hint of light sent a lightning bolt-like surge of pain throughout her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and moaned, which alerted the man sitting at a small desk in the corner of the trailer.

"Are you awake, Hermione?" asked Vlad Taneev. His soft Russian accent was soothing and eased the pain she was feeling.

"Unfortunately," she responded.

"That's good. You suffered a mild concussion. Do you remember what happened?"

Hermione tried to search her memory for the cause of her injury. The only image that came to mind was Ron's sad face and his voice, the voice she missed so much, saying, 'wake up.'

She shook her head. Vlad looked disappointed for a brief moment before smiling gently at her. "That's not unusual. Most people don't remember the moments just before and after a concussion. I'd like you to stay here until tomorrow morning. Do you have anything running in your lab that you need taken care of?"

"I don't think so," she said, her thoughts still muddled.

"Good. Try to relax and let me know if you need anything. Here's your AI," Vlad placed the hand sized computer on the small table next to her bed. "Contact me or Ursula if you need anything or feel any pain."

Hermione agreed and attempted to lie back and relax as Vlad shuffled over to another bed. He was the oldest of the first hundred and his neatly trimmed beard was almost totally gray. She realized that she wasn't the only patient in the clinic trailer and tried to sit up.

"Who's that?" she asked. Vlad turned to answer her.

"I am surprised you're still awake. Nadia and Frank fell asleep almost immediately after waking the first time. Both of them suffered injuries this morning at around the same time you did, though not as serious."

"What happened?"

"We don't know. Nadia was in the airlock. Fortunately her helmet protected her, but she struck her head quite hard on the airlock door. Frank's situation is similar to yours, though his concussion is not as serious. I'm afraid you were the worst and the last to wake up. All of you should be fine. If you'll excuse me?"

Hermione nodded. Confusion was battling something else in her mind. She couldn't figure out what her subconscious was trying to tell her and the pain caused her to fall back asleep before she could resolve it.

* * *

**Author's Note: **_Magical Mars is back! Yay! Thanks for reading, and please **review**. If you have any questions (especially if you haven't read the Mars Trilogy and have no idea what's going on) send me a message or ask it in a review. I'll do my best to answer quickly and comprehensively. _


	6. Planning

**A/N- For the seven of you who were into this story...sorry! Real life and all that. If you need a recap...just read the chapters before this one. This story isn't that long, yet. Please review!**

**Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and the idea for the red bubble is blatantly stolen from Nonjon's Browncoat, Greeneyes...which you should read. And if you have a title suggestions, go for it. I obviously suck at chapter titles.**

* * *

**Planning **

_When did you decide to leave the magical world?_

_I didn't really decide to._

_What do you mean?_

_Well, I don't know that much about how you do things in England, but in Russia most families will disown you for being non-magical. Mine didn't, though._

_Did they treat you badly?_

_No, nothing like that. It was just a feeling of disappointment. More mine than theirs. I couldn't live there, watching my family doing magic and seeing their expressions when I complained about it._

_Is that why you left?_

_I suppose so. Like I said, I never really made a decision to leave. I knew I had to do something with my life, and I was always good at building things. It was something only I could do. Even with magic, there was no one I knew who had the ability to create something useful that was lasting and permanent._

_Did you ever attempt to purchase a wand?_

_No. My family wasn't rich, and wands in Russia are expensive. How much are they in England?_

_Between ten and twenty galleons. I know in Russia, some wands are closer to one-hundred, right?_

_You were lucky if you found one that cheap. And they were never good quality, either. I remember thinking that when my younger brother bought his first wand. I thought to myself, 'I could make something better than that.' I actually considered going into wand-making, but..."_

_No one wanted to buy a wand made by a squib?_

_No one would even consider it._

_When was the last time you had any contact with the magical world?_

_About twenty years ago. My father died and I went to his funeral. My mother died a few years before that. None of the rest of my family seemed all that interested in their sister who couldn't do magic, so I never tried to contact them again. I was just starting my cosmonaut training at that point, and after so many years doing construction and salvage in Siberia, I was just tired of it._

_You didn't meet any witches or wizards for twenty years?_

_I'm sure I did. I saw things that said 'magic' to me, but never pointed it out to my co-workers or anyone else. I didn't want them to think I was strange, and people without magic never notice those kinds of things, anyway, right?_

_Usually. If they do, they often rationalize it to themselves as something more plausible._

_Once the selection process for the First Hundred started, I did my best to shut that part of my brain down. We couldn't have anyone think we were too different or not compatible with the others._

_But you're here now._

_That's true._

_Would you be interested in learning about magic? Maybe we could research how it could supplement your construction. Certain charms could lower the risk of decompression to almost nothing. I could 'discover' a special glass compound that would be basically unbreakable. Our first habitat could be something you've only dreamed about. A work of art._

_I'll have to think about it._

* * *

Harry and Desmond had made it to Underhill in just under five hours, but were forced to wait just over the horizon until after midnight to avoid detection. Desmond did his best to keep Harry calm. The hair on his arms seemed to stand on end as Harry worked himself up, and Desmond imagined himself stuck inside a power substation. They spent almost an hour watching as the sun set. The darkness after the sky finally changed from deep violet to black was complete. The few lights of Underhill were not visible over the shortened horizon. Desmond thought he saw Deimos at one point, but couldn't be sure and his neck was getting sore from looking up through the several centimeter thick shoulder level window, which dampened the slight illumination of the stars

Several more messages from Hiroko and finally Hermione had tempered Harry's worry, which had been steadily increasing as the night dragged on. Desmond had quickly piloted their rover into the farm's garage where he and Harry had been met by Iwao, the half-Swedish, half-Japanese systems engineer who was, for all intents and purposes, working as Hiroko's assistant. He led them to a small shed in the prefabricated greenhouse that sat on the edge of the circle of habitat trailers that were the current make up of Underhill.

Eventually, after Harry had gotten to the point where Desmond was afraid he would have to try and physically restrain the wizard from bursting into the hospital trailer, a quiet, familiar scratching on the door of the closet caused both men to still. Hiroko slipped in through the door, quietly closing it behind her. A corner of her mouth turned up as she glanced at Desmond, but then she turned her attention to Harry. Hiroko tilted her head to the side as she observed the wizard. Harry stared back at her for a moment and just as he was about to ask after Hermione, Hiroko spoke.

"Hermione is fine. Her concussion was not serious. Two others were injured at the same time, and Vlad Taneev is keeping them overnight for observation. You cannot see her. She will come here to you, probably tomorrow morning, unless she is unexpectedly delayed."

"Thank you," said Harry. The frustration and tension drained out of him. Even with the reassuring but short message from Hermione earlier that night as they had waited in the rover he had been worried.

"Who are the others?" asked Desmond.

"Nadia Chernyshevski and Frank Chalmers. It's curious. Hermione quickly surmised that their injuries occurred at roughly the same time that you began experimenting with your magic."

"Harry here fell down, too. I was watching, 'Roko. I ain't never seen anything like it in my life. A huge red bubble, bigger and bigger, til it popped and scattered up into the sky. It must've been some sort of magic Harry here had never seen before. Knocked him on his ass. It was quite a sight."

Harry shrugged and looked down, slightly uncomfortable with the ambiguous praise. "I don't know what exactly happened. The spell worked. No magic I did affected our walkers or the rover."

"Harry, do you think you could cast a spell?" requested Hiroko. Desmond seemed to understand immediately and grinned crookedly.

"Here?" asked Harry.

"Yes." She looked around for a moment before her eyes settled on her wristpad computer with a mysterious glint. She quickly released the clasp and placed it on the ground between the three of them.

"I don't want to ruin it," said Harry.

"You don't have to worry about that. I can replace it quite easily, but I might not need to if what I predict is correct."

Harry's eyes widened as he suddenly grasped the possible repercussions of the spell he had cast that morning. With a practiced ease born of many years in the Aurors, Harry produced his wand and cast a quick levitation charm on the wristpad before Hiroko or Desmond could take more than a breath. The small computer rose in the air until it was at the same height as Hiroko's face. Harry floated it over to her.

"Amazing," whispered Hiroko to herself with a tiny smile. She hesitantly grasped it out of the air and, with a glance, determined it was still working without any side-effects from the magic.

"It's still working?" asked Harry incredulously. Hiroko nodded and handed the wristpad to Harry without speaking. He checked it out briefly, confirming the fact that the computer was still functional before handing it back to Hiroko and sighing.

"I need to talk to Hermione."

* * *

The next morning came quickly. Harry was woken by his friend and fellow hidden colonist muttering to himself as he peered at his AI on an adjacent cot, jabbing at it with his index finger every few seconds. Harry stretched and rubbed his face, feeling the lighter gravity as he sat up on his cot.

"What time is it?"

"Just after seven," replied Desmond, glancing at him briefly before turning his attention back to the AI.

Harry swung his legs over the edge of the cot and rooted through his pack for one of the nutrient bars that Hermione and Hiroko continually supplied them with, regardless of their wishes. He unwrapped it and held it in his left hand. With his right, he aimed his wand and transfigured the bar into a perfectly ripened banana. Desmond glanced over just in time to see the banana form and smiled.

"Can you magic me one of those, Harry?" he asked, his AI forgotten for the moment.

"Sure, have this one," said Harry. He handed Desmond the banana and transfigured a second bar.

The two friends ate in near silence for several minutes, with only an occasional excited exclamation from Desmond regarding the magic used to create their breakfast. Just as Harry was about to vanish the peels, a rapid tapping on the door of their shed, followed by the door handle being jiggled in an attempt to open it, triggered a flurry of action from the two hidden colonists. The lights of the windowless shed were extinguished by Desmond, who cleared off their cots which were immediately shrunk and banished behind a stack of plastic crates.

In less than five seconds, Desmond and Harry had managed to hide or erase any signs of their existence, as well as pull Harry's invisibility cloak over themselves. They held their breath as the door opened. Through it, the two glimpsed the interior of the geodesic dome that housed the farm. A bright pink glow from the Martian dawn illuminated the interior of the shed and the person who entered was lit from behind, with the face covered in shadow. Harry instantly recognized the posture and shape of Hermione as she stepped fully inside.

"Shut the door, Hermione," he whispered, still under the cloak. She started slightly and then did as requested. Harry pulled off the cloak and rolled it up, placing it in his pocket. With a quick flick of his wrist, a glowing light radiated from the tip of his wand, causing all three to blink until their eyes adjusted.

"Harry! The spell worked this far?" she asked, already fairly certain of the answer after talking with an enigmatic Hiroko to find out where the stowaways were hiding after she was discharged from the clinic.

"I guess so," he said, turning the shed's light back on and extinguishing his wand. "It knocked me out when I cast it, and Desmond said a spherical wave of red energy moved outward before dissipating."

"Did you see how far it went?" she asked the Trinidadian.

Desmond shook his head. "It was big, though."

"How big?"

"Real big. I thought maybe you could see it from Underhill. It was the color of the sky, so maybe it went unnoticed."

Harry nodded in agreement. "Non-magical people seem to see what they expect to see. It's how our world has stayed relatively hidden all this time."

"Did you feel anything?" asked Hermione, still searching for as much data as she could. "A push, a feeling inside of you?"

"What kind of feeling?" asked Desmond.

"Anything unusual. A sense of euphoria? Impending doom? Any strong emotions that suddenly affected you?"

Desmond shook his head. "The only emotion I can describe to you was awe. It was an amazing thing, seeing magic like that. Then fear for Harry, here. When I saw him lying on the ground like a dead man, it scared the hell out of me. I've grown fond of the fool."

Hermione smiled at Harry's abashed expression and gripped his arm affectionately. "I was worried about the two of you, too." A hazy vision of Ron's face and the feeling of wonderment that seemed to manifest itself every time Harry had done something incredible percolated through her mind. A flash of memory, Harry casting his patronus against the dementors during their third year. A young boy jumping on a troll's back. Her dead best friend appearing like a ghost in the midst of the final battle and standing up to Voldemort, taunting him and begging him to show remorse before once again performing an impossible feat.

"Hermione?" said Harry, looking worriedly at his best friend.

"Did you know Ron used to have nightmares about the Chamber of Secrets?"

Harry stared at her. The two of them rarely spoke about any of the Weasleys, especially their deceased spouses. And almost never to each other. The emotional wounds were still too fresh. Desmond had heard a bit about the youngest Weasley siblings from the two of them in one-on-one conversations, but had never seen Harry or Hermione speak about them in each other's presence.

"I knew Ginny did, but Ron and I didn't really talk much about it."

Hermione nodded. "He always said you could do the impossible. The night of your wedding, we talked about it. He said the reason he believed in you through everything was the knowledge that he knew you would never lose. He said you didn't know how to." Moisture filled her eyes and she sniffed once and blinked several times until she regained control.

Harry swallowed and said nothing. Desmond waited, slightly uncomfortable, in silence.

"Well," Hermione continued. "I think you may have done it again. I can't be sure, of course, without doing a bit of research," Harry snorted. "But it's entirely possible that you've altered the state of magic on the entire planet."

Harry stared at her. He was about to argue when a cackling laugh startled both of them as Desmond slapped Harry on the back, his dreadlocks snapping back and forth as he shook his head.

"That makes as much sense as anything! If anyone can do it, you can. I don't know magic, but I know you, Harry!"

Harry scowled at him and then turned unhappily to his oldest friend. "What in Merlin's name are you talking about?"

"Think about it, Harry. We've come to Mars, a planet that is, for all intents and purposes, dead. No biosphere that we can detect, an atmosphere that is almost completely frozen out and arid to the point that we can barely detect any hint of moisture in the rocks or regolith. The lithosphere is solid and unmoving, with no detectable tectonic movement since the Tharsis Bulge formed almost four billion years ago. We don't know much about the origins of magic, but it seems to be wielded only by life, at least on Earth. It makes sense that, until we arrived the 'magisphere', for lack of a better term, was static."

"So, you think that Harry here has kick started the magic on Mars?" said Desmond.

"I think so. He was the first person to cast any magic on the planet. From my studies, I've learned that the true masters of magic, dark, light and everything in-between, relied on intent and power more than anything."

"So, because Harry's a very powerful wizard and intended to allow the use of electronics in conjunction with magic when he cast the first spell on Mars, the magic of the planet is going to allow it everywhere?"

Hermione nodded excitedly. "Yes! At least I think so. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me right now. Think about it. We're almost thirty kilometers away from where you cast the spell, Harry. If magic seems to have no affect on the computers or other electronic devices in Underhill, why would it be any different in Hellas Basin, or Valles Marineris?"

"Maybe there's a limit," argued Desmond. "Perhaps there is a radius, beyond which Harry's spell is ineffective or the magic of it just didn't reach."

Hermione shook her head. "Magic acts more like energy than anything else we can compare it to. If the spell was able to affect us here at Underhill, there's no reason it would stop here or anywhere else on the planet."

"Energy has a limit. Over time and distance it dissipates. I don't imagine magic is all that different."

"But what would stop it? You were over the horizon, well over it, and yet I can cast a spell with little worry for the electronics surrounding us," said Hermione. "Is something going to block the spells path?"

Desmond shrugged, still not completely convinced, but enthusiastic enough about Hermione's theory to let things play out until it could be proven one way or the other.

Harry, who had been silent as his two friends debated and fleshed out their theory, finally spoke.

"How can we find out? We can't just take a rover and drive around the planet, casting spells on stolen computers and hoping they don't malfunction."

"Why not?" said Hermione. "The rover is already charmed to work around magic. This is the only way we can learn what we need to know."

"I think we've been Shanghaied," said an amused Desmond. Harry only stared at her.

"You said wanted to see the planet," said Hermione, a little uncertainly as she realized she was assuming they'd be happy to help her with her magical research.

"It's better than living in a closet," agreed Desmond with a glance at Harry.

Harry blew his breath out through his teeth. "When do we leave?"


	7. On the Surface

_Let me know what you think. Questions, concerns and comments are very welcome in reviews or PM's. Anyone who is interested in beta-ing would be my hero._

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**On the Surface**

Harry concentrated on the basalt boulder in front of him. It was dark colored, almost black, with streaks of red and yellow mineralization so small he could only see them when he looked close enough to reach out and touch it with his gloved hand. Desmond stood several meters behind him, ready to react to any unexpected side-effect of the magic Harry was about to perform. Their rover was parked over one-hundred meters away, tucked away in a depression between two long mounds that Desmond claimed were compacted dunes consisting of sand and even smaller fines. Harry, not nearly as scientifically minded or experienced as his friend, yielded to his opinion.

The boulder was large, nearly three meters tall and twice as wide near the base. Harry was attempting to carve out a hollow in the side by vanishing the material in such a way that it wouldn't crack the exterior. It was a delicate process, or so he explained to Desmond who had started pacing after the first fifteen minutes Harry spent staring at the boulder. He'd considered just blasting it for a moment, but memories of the brittleness of the surface regolith and the extreme temperatures that would occur in the future caused him to put some serious thought into it.

"Couldn't you just magic it back together if it cracks?" Desmond had asked.

"Rocks and metals tend to lose their natural strength when you use magic to repair them. They become brittle and weak if exposed to extreme stress."

It wasn't the only candidate they had for converting into a cache. It was their first attempt, however, and Harry wanted it to go right the first time. The plan was simple: create various shelters and caches across the surface of the planet so that in case of emergency any colonist in danger would be able to stop and resupply or take shelter. The summer dust storms could coincide with the initial manned surface surveys in several months and Hiroko had strongly suggested that while the two of them were out exploring, they should hollow out as many boulders or crater walls as they could, especially with Harry's magical ability accelerating their ability to construct them.

Harry finally exhaled and pointed his wand at the boulder. He ignored Desmond's sigh of relief that the wait was over and attempted to vanish a quaffle sized chunk of the boulder. The portion he was aiming for was about a meter off the ground, almost waist height, and when it disappeared a few small pieces from the top of the empty sphere crumbled and fell slowly to the ground.

"It doesn't seem too stable," said Harry as he peered intently at the hole that was continuing to crumble bit by bit into the tiny cavern he had created.

"Can you make it stick together?" Desmond's voice whispered through his helmet's intercom.

"I could use a permanent sticking charm, I suppose. I don't want to risk using magic to hold it together, though. I still don't know how spells might act differently here."

"What about fire? You can create fire, am I right?"

"Sure, but I don't know how hot I can make it."

"Might as well try, eh? Worst thing that could happen is it doesn't work and we have to figure out another way to stabilize the inside."

Harry nodded in agreement, not realizing Desmond couldn't see the movement, and focused again on the boulder. He pointed his wand at the small cavity he had created and cast _incendio _with as much force behind it as he could. A stream of fire shot out from his wand at the boulder, so bright that Desmond had to turn away while Harry closed his eyes and hoped for the best. He kept the spell up for almost ten seconds and then opened his eyes to see what affect the fire had had.

The small cavity was no longer losing pieces or crumbling at all. A few stray crumbled bits of rock that had been about to fall were melted along the newly stable circular wall, creating an uneven if smooth face. Desmond slowly walked up to Harry and stood next to him in silence for almost a minute as the two stared at what Harry had done.

"How hot can you get that fire?" asked Desmond.

"I have no idea."

"Well, it's at least 1000 degrees. I don't suppose the melting point of basalt would change so drastically on Mars that a regular fire could create obsidian..."

Harry tuned out Desmond as his friend muttered to himself about various melting points and the creation of igneous rocks on Mars, which was geologically inactive by all indications. He interrupted with a warning.

"I'm going to try and expand it now. We're going for one cubic meter of space here, right?"

Desmond backed away, still able to see the afterimage of a stream of fire from Harry's first attempt, and told him to proceed.

After several more _evanescos, __reductos _and _incendios_, the interior of the boulder resembled a smooth, rounded obsidian bowl laid down on its side. Occasional swirls of olive green, oxidized red and sulfuric yellow-green decorated it at random. Harry summoned the fragments of rock that had been blown out of the boulder and reassembled them as best he could into the shape of the missing side that he had obliterated. He melted the inside of it, determined to make it as sturdy and solid as possible. The new door, looking close enough to the original exterior so as not to be noticed, ended up with a low enough weight that Harry or Desmond could slide it open on their own with a bit of effort. Overall, they accomplished a good amount for about an hour's worth of work.

The plan for the boulder after this was simple enough for Harry and Desmond. They merely had to drive away and find additional suitable candidates for alteration. Hiroko claimed that she and some of the farm crew would use several scheduled excursions in the future to stock and organize their system of caches. The two of them weren't privy to the farm team's ultimate plan, but it was obvious Hiroko did not intend on cooperating with the United Nations Organization Mars Authority, or UNOMA. Harry remembered a moment from a conversation the two of them and Hermione had had back on the Ares.

"Hiroko was more focused on her studies when we met," Desmond had said as the three of them sat in Hermione's cabin on the _Ares_. "She wasn't as driven, not until the selection process was announced. We were in Cambridge together, for awhile. It was a cold climate compared to our homes, so we helped keep each other warm. She had not traveled much outside of Japan when we met and bit by bit she started reading some books that weren't related to her classes. I did the same, but my sense of disorder is more of a natural result of growing up in Port-of-Spain. It was chaos everyday. Hiroko never talked much about her family or Japan. When she mentioned it, it was always with a sense of disappointment. Like there was a wasted potential there."

"Do you think the two of you bonded over your political views?" Hermione had asked in the blunt, analytical way that Harry had come to know and accept and that Desmond didn't seem to sense as insulting.

Desmond snorted, doing his best to keep his laughter at a volume consistent with the whispered conversation they were having. "Oddly enough, she never agreed with me about that. Several of our debates, that's what I call them, were related to our conflicting views on collectivism. At least that's where it started."

Harry grinned inside his helmet as he remembered various discussions between Desmond and Hermione. Her sense of order was offended by Desmond's intentional, almost fanatical, disregard for authority, though the encouragement of societal upheaval was a characteristic they all seemed to share. Their agreement on their end goals led to the three of them becoming quite close over the ten-month voyage as they discussed the future of Mars and magic.

Harry and Desmond made their way back to the rover, which was under a special glamour spell to appear as just another boulder, and cycled through the airlock. The two of them ate a quick meal of noodles, Desmond speaking the whole time of different uses for magic in construction and concealment.

"Does it make you tired to use so much magic?" asked Desmond.

Harry finished chewing and took a moment to examine his physical and magical strength at the moment. He felt slightly tired and a bit over-extended magically, but not exhausted.

"Yeah, but not as much as it did on Earth. At least I don't feel as tired. It's strange, because I never used _incendio, _that fire spell, for any purpose close to that. It was always used either against someone or in short bursts to start a small fire. _Reducto _and _evanesco_ the other spells, aren't difficult."

"Are you hungrier or thirstier than normal?" Desmond continued his questioning, reminding him of Hermione.

Harry shook his head. "No, I feel normal. Less tired than I've felt for a long time, actually."

"Hypothetically, how long do you think you could work on something like what you did today?"

"You mean on something bigger?" asked Harry.

Desmond nodded once, his eyes locked onto Harry's as he waited for the wizard's response.

"Probably two or three hours at a time. I think it depends on the material and what exactly we're trying to do," said Harry.

"Once we get those excavating robots out here, and 'Roko manages to sneak one away, we will build some amazing places!"

They finished their meal, discussing the future and how magic would be a part of it.

* * *

They continued driving east. The rover had enough fuel, combined with the solar panels, to drive entirely around the planet at the equator. They had no desire to test its stamina, however, and the two of them were planning on driving only twenty-five hundred kilometers away from Underhill before turning back. This would still be the farthest any of the colonists had traveled on the surface until Ann Clayborne's proposed expedition to the North Pole a few months in the future.

Each day, they would stop the rover near large boulders or crater walls and go outside, where Harry would attempt to carve out a space large enough to be useful for their purposes. After several days, Harry began using more delicate, deliberate spells that resulted in faster and more uniform spaces carved within the rocks. The two would then spend several hours walking around and taking small samples for Hermione to test when they returned to Underhill.

Dinner became one of the highlights of the day as Harry delved into his memories to focus on the tastes, smells and textures of different foods and meals he had enjoyed throughout his life. He would attempt to mimic them in the transfigured meals that always started off as bland, emotionless, microwavable sustenance. Harry was fairly certain that his attempt at curry was nowhere near accurate, but Desmond only smiled and offered that it was still tastier than instant noodles or nutrient bars. Neither of them ever left food on their trays. The amount of energy, both physical and magical, they were expending each day was tremendous. Just getting in and out of their walkers consumed more calories than an average day back on Earth would have.

After their tenth day heading east, and Harry had transformed his seventh boulder into a potential cache, the two stowaways reached Chryse Planitia. The boulders shrank in size and increased in number until the rover, even with its industrial grade shocks, began to shudder and shake unless they actively searched out less rock strewn areas to drive over. The horizon, usually so close on Mars it felt like you could throw and rock and hit the ground beyond their sight, dropped away. A sense of familiarity itched at the base of their minds. Thanks to the bowl shape of Chryse Planitia, a large plain-like depression just over 1000 kilometers east of Underhill, the horizon reached distances of nearly 20 kilometers.

"It reminds me of Earth," said Desmond as he stared out of the windshield.

Harry only nodded, focused on avoiding the larger boulders that could potentially damage the rover.

"I imagine this will be a popular area for cities, once more colonists arrive."

"How long do you think that will take?" asked Harry.

"Who can say?" said Desmond with a shrug. "Eventually, though, they'll have cities and towns out on the surface. If Russell has his way, they won't even need domes or artificial atmospheres."

"You think terraforming will happen that fast?"

Desmond shrugged again. "I have no idea. I've seen predictions that it could take anywhere from 200 to 200,000 years. 'Roko mentioned Russell has a plan that could create a breathable atmosphere within a couple of centuries. That would require serious investment by some very powerful people, though. And with the help of more wizards like you it could happen even sooner."

Harry frowned at that, still focused on driving the rover. Desmond laughed at his friend's reaction.

"You don't like that idea?"

"Not really. I think the magical world is probably more corrupt and incompetent than the muggle world."

"Surely there must be some wizards and witches that you wouldn't mind joining us here," said Desmond, gently. Harry's disappointment with the wizarding world was a topic they had discussed many times in the year or so since they'd met.

"I suppose," allowed Harry, when he realized Desmond was waiting for an answer. The death of his children, wife and extended family, save Hermione, was a topic that he had slowly been opening up to with his friend.

"What about that Luna woman? You and Hermione haven't had anything bad to say about her."

"I don't see Luna abandoning her career. The search for mythical creatures isn't something that you can really complete."

Desmond chuckled, the descriptions of Luna from both Harry and Hermione had been so vivid that he could almost imagine he knew her himself. "What if you explained to her about the rich magical ecosystem here? Perhaps that would pique her interest?"

Harry laughed at that and brought the rover to a stop next to a relatively large boulder, though it was too small for them to transform into a cache.

"That's not a bad idea."

They quickly shifted the rover into sleep mode, shutting down the hydrazine motor and disabling the navigation system.

"Want to go out?" asked Harry. Desmond nodded and the two of them went through the arduous process of putting on their walkers and cycling through the airlock. They had gotten into the habit of taking a short walk during sunset, reveling in the experience of being out in the open. Free from the confinement they had been forced to endure during the long voyage to Mars and the first weeks hiding in closets and spare trailers, both stowaways spent as much time on the surface as they could.

Chryse Planitia was the most uniform expanse of land and rock within range of Underhill that they planned on visiting during this excursion. There were no hillocks or ridges for them to climb. Any craters that may have once existed in the area were long since filled in by fines, their rims eroded away by eons of ceaseless martian winds. With the horizons lengthened by the bowl like shape of the circular plain of Chryse Planitia, the sky seemed to have opened up. Harry felt like he could see at least twice as far as when they were in Underhill or anywhere since. He felt the desire to fly on his firebolt for the first time since the death of his family and it brought tears to his eyes that he refused to let fall.

Desmond seemed to sense his mood and was uncharacteristically silent. They walked in the same direction, but with a distance between them that neither grew nor shrank until the sun reached the horizon and the sky began to change to colors never before seen during and Earthly sunset. As it darkened, it became a rainbow of reds and purples, murky and opaque, with yellow and orange wisps of clouds kilometers above their heads still lit by a sun more distant and dim than their eyes had evolved to recognize as natural.

Even through the heating elements of their walkers, Harry and Desmond could feel the sudden drop in temperature as the sun finally hid behind the almost normal looking horizon. With a shiver that had less to do with the cold and almost everything to do with the sadness radiating from the powerful wizard he watched through the faceplate of his helmet, Desmond motioned in a questioning way towards the rover. He felt Harry nod, even though he couldn't see it inside his friend's helmet, and the two of them headed back to their transient home in silence.


	8. Changes

_Disclaimer: Neither Kim Stanley Robinson nor JK Rowling know I exist. They also don't know about this story. These are both probably good things._

_Please Review. It's the right thing to do, and you don't want to be wrong. I also still need a beta if anyone is interested. Please...?_

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**Changes**

Frank Chalmers was unhappy. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and since arriving on Mars his frustration had only increased. It had started on the _Ares_, with Maya's infuriating game of trying to choose between him and John. Since landfall, the colonists who had ignored him in his role as one of the leaders on the voyage out had suddenly decided he was the answer to all their problems. Everything from missing equipment in the supply drops that had preceded the colonists to complaints about the fines, were suddenly his responsibility. Disagreements about schedules and living assignments combined with the total lack of time to deal with any of them had quickly burned Franks already short fuse to the point of almost certain combustion. It had all culminated in an unseen force slamming him out of his bed and headfirst into the wall of the trailer he temporarily called home just a week after their landing.

He had awoken in the medical trailer, still a bit groggy, with a pounding headache and clenched teeth. Vlad had checked him out for a moment before he passed back out. Awaking an indeterminate amount of time later, Frank slowly stood on unsteady feet and spotted Nadia and Hermione, unconscious in neighboring beds. He approached Vlad's office and received the same information Hermione had earlier; the three of them had mysteriously been struck by an unknown source of energy and knocked unconscious. Annoyed at the lack of useful information, Frank had asked Vlad, in the most polite tone he could manage, if was cleared to leave and go back to work. Vlad smiled slightly, further irritating him, and agreed that he was well enough to go back to work as long as he promised to come back if he experienced any nausea or dizziness.

Several people asked him how he was feeling throughout the day, further irritating him. They each receiving curt responses of "fine" until John Boone lowered himself down in the seat next to Frank at dinner that evening.

"How's your head?" asked John, in the affable tone he used whenever the two of them were having a disagreement but hiding it from those around them.

A surreptitious glance around the small trailer while taking a bite of his dinner assured Frank that while several people were present, none were near enough to overhear their conversation as long as they kept their voices down, not a sure thing when the two of them spoke in any situation, especially recently.

"Better, but still a little sore," muttered Frank. John would know he was lying if he gave the standard response he'd been using all day. They'd known each other for too long to even bother hiding something so trivial.

"Any idea what caused it?" asked John.

Frank shook his head, wincing almost imperceptibly at the slight twinge his action caused.

"Nadia and Hermione should be out by tomorrow morning. Vlad said neither of them had any idea what happened, either," said Frank, sharing as much information as he could. Only John was able to draw him out like that, regardless of the current tension between them.

He was about to voice his personal theory when a movement near the airlock caught his eye. Maya Toitovna removed her helmet and glanced around the trailer, spotting the two of them sitting together. Her eagle-like eyes widened momentarily before her face seemed to close off and freeze into an expression that promised a long argument for John the next time she got him alone. Frank's heart, normally an organ he did his best to ignore, seemed to skip a beat at the sight of her face, certainly one of the most beautiful of the women that made up half of the First Hundred. The skin tight walker almost elicited another reaction from a different part of his anatomy.

Maya stalked towards the changing area of their tiny trailer and Frank cursed fate and the organizing committee of UNOMA who was in charge of living assignments for placing the three of them in the same residential trailer. Their affair on the _Ares _had been short-lived, but one of the most intense relationships he could remember experiencing since his divorce. Thinking on it for a moment, Frank realized that the relationship he had shared with his ex-wife hadn't had nearly the same amount of passion or importance as the rendezvouses the two had shared in the atriums during the voyage to Mars.

He looked at John, whose face was missing the trademark John Boon grin that the entire world seemed to find so frustratingly ingratiating.

"Frank," said John, trailing off, oddly unsure of what he wanted to say.

"It's fine," snapped Frank, uncomfortable with speaking about his feelings, even with John, who was as close to a brother as he had, regardless of their current conflict.

"No, it's not," said John, surprising Frank, and apparently John himself if the fleeting expression of surprise on his face was any indication. "What Maya and I have... we didn't mean to hurt you. Sometimes things happen despite what your brain tells you is right or wrong."

Frank could feel his emotions shutting down, and John could obviously see his face closing off. He spoke quickly and quietly, a desperate attempt to make his friend understand before the damage to their relationship was irreparable.

"Neither of us want you to be miserable. I didn't plan this, and I'm sorry."

Frank had been preparing to stand up and walk away, not wanting to deal with more betrayal. Another part of him, much smaller and quieter, wanted to accept John's attempt at reaching out and move on as if nothing happened. However, his brain seemed to freeze as the words, "I'm sorry," pierced through his shields of anger bitterness.

The two of them stared at each other, and Frank couldn't help but remember moments from their lives together. They flowed through his memory in a quick montage of images of their long months on the space station and the heady feeling when John had been named commander of the first manned Mars mission in 2014. They had organized their plan of attack, an attempt to force humanity into space and off of the home planet that was so quickly becoming devastated by humanity's actions, and now they both were here, on Mars.

"It's fine," Frank repeated, and they both knew something had changed. Frank even managed to force a tortured rictus of acceptance that John responded to with a familiar grin of his own. Maya, who had visibly calmed down during the process of peeling off her walker and quickly wiping down, entered the tiny dining area and sat down next to John, but not close enough to imply anything other than friendship. A concession to Frank that irritated him at the same time that it mollified the surge of betrayal that he consciously had to push down.

"Frank," she said, greeting him cooly. She obviously expected the usual sneer and sarcastic comments he had been directing at her since the _Ares. _

He nodded at her, unable to force a smile, but the neutral expression he gave her seemed to please her and she smiled warmly at the two of them. Frank knew she felt she had done something to fix the problem she had created and had to clamp down on his contempt for her. John was like his brother, but Maya would probably always be a reminder of what could have been, a feeling he was both used to and abhorred at the same time.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked, doing her best to maintain the civility that had been missing from their interactions for the last several months.

"Still a bit of a headache, to be honest," he said. "But I'm curious what caused our injuries. Hermione and Nadia are both a bit worse off, so I'll wait until tomorrow to figure out what the hell happened."

"Want some help?" asked John.

Maya nodded, certain that she would be welcome to assist the two of them in their search for the cause of the three colonists' injuries. "Neither of us will be able to do much of anything until Nadia is back. We're both assigned to her team."

Frank saw the worry for her friend on Maya's face and remembered that the two Russian women were sisters just as much as he and John were brothers. A small bit of his anger towards her dissipated.

"Sure," said Frank. John grinned at him and Maya clutched his forearm in a show of solidarity that barely bothered him.

"Hermione will probably demand to be included, as well," said John. "We probably won't need to ask her to help, anyway. She'll already be knee deep in research by this time tomorrow."

Maya slapped his arm. "John!" She smiled at both of them and stood, walking to their trailer's pantry to prepare dinner.

John and Frank shared a look that had nothing to do with Maya. A mystery like this, only a week since their arrival, could have consequences that neither of them had planned for, and that scared Frank more than any idea of loneliness or loss he could imagine.

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Hermione and Nadia were walking along the edge of the excavated strip of regolith that would eventually become the home of the brick barrel-vaults and atrium that would make up the first permanent habitat at Underhill. The plan involved the construction of twenty-four vaults in a square pattern that would surround the atrium, over 10,000 square meters of living space altogether. Hermione had stayed true to her promise of helping Nadia design and execute the construction of the habitats.

There were no other colonists within their field of vision, and Hermione was feeling more alone than she had since arriving on Mars. Her friendship with Nadia was growing stronger, but she missed Harry, and Desmond to a slightly lesser extent. The stowaways had been spending more time in the chaos, as Desmond was fond of calling it. Their excursions grew in length each trip, and the amount of time they spent in Underhill lessened. It was understandable, thought Hermione. She couldn't imagine being cooped up in the farm, with only Hiroko and her crew to speak to, only allowed out at night when there was no chance of other colonists arriving unannounced.

The most recent expedition, their fourth, was about to hit the three week mark, and Hermione felt an irrational jealousy at the bond the two men had formed. She hadn't felt such a closeness with anyone but Harry since Ron's death, and it was starting to affect her. Loneliness was a feeling she had little experience with since her first year at Hogwarts. Her friendship with Frank Chalmers had been forming in fits and starts as he seemed to have reverted to his standard state of general disdain for everything as opposed to vitriolic anger and bitterness he had behaved with since his not-so-secret falling out with Maya and John during the voyage out. His reaction to the idea of magic, as well as a magical world hidden in plain sight back on Earth, seemed to vacillate between an almost hyper-focused curiosity and intense frustration that he was a squib.

She was shaken from her musings when Nadia stopped to crouch at the control panel of one of the robotic bulldozers that she was using to carve out the huge swaths of regolith to make room for the vaults. It appeared to have become stuck, Hermione realized. The blade was moving back and forth only a few centimeters at a time, with a clicking sound loud enough to be heard through the thin martian atmosphere as well as their helmets. Nadia cursed at it in Russian, which made Hermione smile at the short woman's affection for her tools, large or small. The fines and dust (Ann Clayborne had made sure all the colonists knew the difference) had continued to play havoc with their equipment in the months since they had arrived on Mars.

Nadia stood and walked purposefully toward the blade, taking a tool out of her kit that Hermione didn't recognize. She proceeded to use the tool like a hammer, hitting the machine in various spots, as if she were trying to abuse it into working. Quickly placing the tool back into her kit with the speed of someone used to working with hands covered by thick gloves over many years, Nadia pulled out a can of compressed air and a small brush, determined to clear the fines out of whatever had caused the bulldozer to become stuck.

A quick, jerky movement of the blade. A sudden cry, made more startling by the source being directly next to her ear, caused Hermione to fly forward towards her friend, who was bent over and clutching her hand to her stomach.

"What happened?" asked Hermione with concern.

"My hand!" moaned Nadia, swaying back and forth rhythmically.

"Let me see it," ordered Hermione, firmly. She did her best to keep the panic out of her voice.

Nadia shakily held her left hand out to Hermione, who sucked in her breath at the missing pinky finger and the steam rising from the slowly flowing blood. Shocked into momentary inaction, Hermione could only watch with a mix of horror and admiration as Nadia made a fist and shoved her injured hand into the frozen ground. A low moan transmitted through her helmet as Nadia successfully staunched the bleeding, steaming stump where her smallest finger used to be thanks to the extreme low temperature of the martian surface.

With the immediate danger of blood loss temporarily avoided, Hermione switched her radio to the common frequency.

"Anyone near the habitat site?" Her voice was calm, surprising herself. Nadia seemed to be going into some sort of shock as she clutched her injured hand to herself.

Several people radioed back, none of whom were close enough to help immediately. Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, attempting to think of the best solution. She knew what she had to do, but worried that allowing the secret of apparation out would have far reaching consequences that she couldn't follow to any positive logical conclusion. Another moan from Nadia, who seemed to be fading away as her body sank lower to the freezing surface of the construction site took the decision out of her hands as she took two steps forward and wrapped Nadia in her arms.

"I'm going to apparate you to the medical trailer," she said as their helmet visors touched, doing away with the need to use the radio so that no one would hear her speaking about magic.

Hermione saw Nadia nod and began to focus. She hadn't apparated since leaving Earth, and had never been all that adept at side-along apparation. The variables involved with apparating on Mars: different gravity and atmospheric pressure, as well as bringing along several kilograms of walkers, made Hermione nervous. Taking a deep breath, Hermione clutched her friend tightly and focused on the airlock of the medical trailer, fervently hoping that there wouldn't be anyone there to witness their arrival.

The familiar feeling of being squeezed through a tube, as uncomfortable as always, reassured her. Less than a second later, the two colonists stood inside the airlock and Hermione immediately began to open the inner door so that Nadia could receive medical attention as soon as possible. She turned around and saw her friend had collapsed to the floor, apparently unconscious. The stress of apparating for the first time, combined with the shock and pain of losing a finger had obviously been too much for Nadia. She pulled the short, somewhat rotund woman through the door and into the clinic by her armpits. Vlad, who was standing at a supply cabinet, turned around in shock at the sight of the two of them lying on the floor. He didn't move as Hermione stood tiredly and closed the airlock door with as much speed as she could before removing her helmet and turning to the nobel-prize winning doctor.

"She lost her smallest finger. Left hand. She cauterized it already by pushing it into the ground, but I think she's gone into shock." Hermione knew she was speaking quickly, but assumed Vlad wouldn't be fazed by it.

He nodded in understanding and ordered her to help him get Nadia onto the operating table. The two of them carefully stripped off her walker, helmet and right glove. Vlad worked delicately on her left hand, using tiny scissors and tweezers that he continually disinfected as he neared the bloody stump covered in reddish clumps of dust and small rocks. Hermione, having done everything she could, stood back and watched the oldest member of the First Hundred work his own type of magic.

Ursula Kohl, another member of the biomed team, as well as Vlad's partner both personally and professionally, had appeared at some point during the procedure. Hermione couldn't remember when, though the fact that she suffered from the ever-present helmet hair indicated she had not been in the trailer when Hermione and Nadia had arrived. The two doctors worked quickly and efficiently as they cleaned and dressed Nadia's mangled hand. Hermione observed them with something close to awe. Growing up as a muggle-born, she had been fortunate to never have needed such medical attention or know anyone who did until entering the magical world. Since getting her Hogwarts letter, she and her family had exclusively seen healers at St. Mungo's or had them visit at home, especially after Rose and Hugo had been born. A twinge of familiar regret that the non-magical and magical worlds were so segregated flittered through the part of her mind not focused on her friend's injury and treatment.

Finally, Vlad and Ursula removed their gloves and jointly pushed the operating table into the tiny recovery room where Hermione had awoken several months ago after Harry had awakened the magic of Mars. They transferred Nadia onto one of the beds, then placed the operating table back before cleaning and disinfecting it. When they reemerged and approached Hermione together, she realized she had managed to remove her walker and sit down at some point, though she couldn't remember when.

"Hermione, are you alright?" asked Ursula. Hermione had always liked the small Russian doctor. Her good nature reminded Hermione of Susan Bones, though with black hair and slavic features. She chastised herself for once again comparing one of the colonists to a Hogwarts classmate, a habit she had never been able to break since graduation.

Her hesitation seemed to concern the two Russians, and Vlad leaned down in front of her and began to check her eyes. Hermione blinked and shook her head.

"I'm fine, sorry. Just thinking about something. Is Nadia okay?" she asked.

Vlad stood back up and shared a quick glance with Ursula before responding. "She will be fine. There's no way to re-attach the finger, even if you had brought it with you. I was impressed with her solution to halt the bleeding. It was quite clever."

"There is something we wanted to ask you," started Ursula. Hermione tried to form her face into an expression that would appear helpful and open.

"Sure, go ahead."

The second look the two doctors exchanged was definitely longer than the first, and Hermione began to feel some apprehension about what they were going to ask. There were no stupid members of the First Hundred, and few of them were unobservant. Many of them were scientists, after all.

"How did you get here so quickly? said Ursula. "I heard your call on the common band and made my way to your location as soon as I could, but there was no one there, so I came here as quickly as possible."

Vlad continued. "According to Ursula, the time from your initial call for help and your arrival here was just over two minutes. Being that we are more than five hundred meters from where Nadia severed her finger, I find it extremely curious how quickly the two of you arrived."

Neither of them said anything else, but only looked at Hermione. There was no accusation in their looks, just intense curiosity and a bit of confusion. Almost without thought, her hand moved towards her thigh, where her wand would be if she were still wearing her walker. She glanced across the room, quickly locating it. The idea of obliviating the two doctors briefly crossed her mind, though she quickly disregarded it. Harry and she, as well as Desmond and Hiroko, had discussed the ramifications of sharing the secret of magic with other members of the First Hundred. There was no Ministry of Magic to prevent it and out of all of the colonists, Vlad Taneev was probably the most logical person to bring into their confidence. Not only would his medical and scientific knowledge assist Hermione's attempts at magical research, he would also be the most able to help with any medical issues that might be complicated because of the combination of magic and Mars. The fact that Ursula was an accomplished doctor and researcher in her own right, as well as involved with Vlad in a long term romantic relationship, helped Hermione make her decision.

"Do either of you believe in magic?"

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_Please Review!_


	9. Areophany

_Warning: Human body parts that we all have are mentioned near the end of this chapter. _

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**Areophany **

Harry and Desmond were preparing for the farm team's exodus from Underhill. Hiroko and the rest had spent several years stockpiling replacement parts for rovers, as well as any item or piece of equipment deemed too weathered or damaged to be used any longer. Desmond's ability to scrounge for materials, with the help of Harry and Hermione and their magic, as well as Frank and Nadia's knowledge and assistance, had resulted in a more than adequate supply of rovers, supplies, parts and equipment needed to start their own colony, hidden away from Underhill, UNOMA and the new colonies scattered over Mars.

By their fifth year on Mars, Hiroko had decided that the current organization of UNOMA and Underhill weren't matching up with her own personal plans for an acceptable society. She and Hermione had argued about methods and responsibilities. The argument had ended the same way most arguments with Hiroko ended; with the head of the farm team victorious.

"Those in power failed to create a fair and equitable society on Earth. Why should we expect anything different on Mars?" she had asked.

Hermione had had no answer and the decision to break with Underhill was made. Desmond had been pleased, though unsure about Hiroko's long-term plans. Hermione was furious, knowing that there was nothing she could do other than inform UNOMA of the farm team's plans to abandon Underhill, something she would never consider.

Harry was apathetic, a feeling that had been increasing over the years. The only two people on the entire planet he truly cared about were relatively safe and healthy. Hermione was almost constantly busy with research, either regarding magic or the creation of new materials that she could experiment with, as well as assisting Vlad and Ursula with secret medical studies on the difference between muggles, squibs and magical people. She was so busy that she sometimes had no time to meet with Harry and Desmond during their infrequent visits to Underhill.

As for Desmond, the two of them had been living together, spending almost all of their time together since the day he had snuck about the _Ares_ while still in Earth orbit. They were as close as brothers now, and Harry had trouble caring about anyone else on Mars or Earth. When they were out in the chaos for weeks or months at a time, he could sometimes barely remember life beyond the rover.

When Hiroko decided they would be abandoning Underhill, she had asked the two of them to locate a suitable site for a permanent habitat that could be easily hidden from UNOMA. Harry had explained to her that it would be simple for him to use magic to hide even a fairly large surface settlement.

"We shouldn't take your magic for granted, Harry," Hiroko had responded. "There will probably come a time when simple illusions will no longer be sufficient to hide us."

"You think UNOMA is going to hire wizards to search for you?"

"I think it is possible they already have. Not to look for us, specifically. But if Hermione's theory that nearly a half of a percent of the population on Earth is magical, witches and wizards working for UNOMA is almost a certainty."

And so Harry and Desmond had finally located a large crater just over a hundred kilometers southwest of Argyre Basin, the second largest impact basin on Mars. With a thick and stable crater wall, it was relatively simple to carve out a system of chambers and compartments that could be inhabited once the necessary life support equipment was installed. Hiroko had been pleased with their choice and smiled when they told her the rate at which they were constructing it. Harry's magic allowed what would have taken several years to be completed in just over one Martian year, or M-year.

Hermione had finally taken a break from her research to join her two friends, bringing along Nadia and Hiroko to help put the finishing touches on what would be the home to just over a dozen of the original First Hundred. The entire farm team would be joining them when it was ready for habitation and they had stashed away enough supplies to become self-sustaining. The other colonists who knew of Harry and Desmond's presence were also welcome, though they had no plans to abandon Underhill or the surface world.

There were almost three thousand people on Mars now, only seven Earth years, or four M-years, after the arrival of the _Ares. _Harry and Desmond had watched the landings of the first of the new colonies, a group of exclusively Japanese colonists who had floated down to the surface in small landing craft under parachutes that looked abnormally huge even to Harry. They had immediately poured out of their landing craft and begun scurrying around in an almost ant-like display of purposefulness. He and Desmond had spent several days watching, hidden under disillusionment and notice-me-not charms, amazed at how quickly and neatly the new colony had sprung into being. There was no chaotic construction or scattering of habitats. It was like watching an alternate history of Underhill's construction. How things could have been if they had cared about the aesthetics as much as utility. Harry was a bit surprised at Desmond's obvious approval of their orderliness.

"I have no problem with organization or tidiness. It's what's in their hearts that matters, Harry. Conformity and uniformity are the religions of those in power. If they are the same Japanese 'Roko remembers, they will no doubt oppose us. If they have come here for the same reasons most emigrants leave their homes, they will most likely be our allies. We will have to wait and see where they stand, I think."

Since then, several more colonies had been established in various locations, though most were within ten degrees of the equator. He and Desmond had occasionally made off with unsupervised crates of supplies or equipment while scouting out these new settlements, though never in large enough amounts to raise much suspicion.

The increasing presence of UNOMA officials and nationally sponsored colonies were making the farm team increasingly nervous, and Desmond was jumpier than usual.

Then one afternoon, as the two of them sat in the rover which had been their home since they had driven off into the mysterious martian night during that first chaotic week after landfall, Hiroko had sent them a quick bursted message.

"It's time. We will leave as soon as the two of you return."

Desmond had immediately flown into action, and his usual energy had paled in comparison to the franticness he displayed as the two of them drove back to Underhill. Having a purpose was an amazing tonic to the dreadlocked man. A dose of pepper-up potion the only thing Harry could compare it to.

When they arrived back at the farm just over thirty-six hours later, Hiroko met them at the airlock. She hugged them in greeting, the light in her eyes warming Harry in a way he hadn't felt since his family's death. He could see she had been waiting for this moment since their arrival on Mars. Maybe even longer.

"We're waiting for one more person," she said.

"Who?" asked Desmond.

"Michael Duval," she answered.

"I'll get him," said Harry for some reason he couldn't understand. Desmond had asked if he was sure, but he only nodded his head and pulled his invisibility cloak out of his pocket, draping it over himself and following his AI's directions as he silently moved through the passageway to Nadia's barrel-vaults.

Michael Duval was almost a non-entity in his mind from what little Harry could remember being told about him by the handful of colonists that he'd spoken to. Hermione had mentioned him being almost completely disassociated whenever she spoke to him in the mandatory counseling sessions the colonists were scheduled to attend each month.

"He's obviously suffering from some sort of depression or situational loneliness," she had said during a short visit to Underhill Harry and Desmond had made during the construction of the hidden sanctuary.

"Of course he is," said Desmond. "He's surrounded by a colony of eccentrics who all think they're smart enough to not need counseling. Who is he supposed to turn to when he needs help? Frank? Maya? Most psychologists have psychologists of their own."

Hermione had nodded in agreement. Harry had felt pity for the lone Frenchman in Underhill but the conversation had quickly moved on to plans for the hidden colony and neither of the stowaways had given much thought to the unhappy psychologist until Hiroko had spoken his name.

Harry found him lying down on the small bed in his room. He was watching French television and for some reason, Harry remembered a moment at Grimmauld Place during the summer after fourth year. He had walked into the living room and seen Sirius lying on the one couch clean enough for use. His godfather had had a look on his face that made his stomach twist up in empathy. It was a mix of loneliness, boredom and hopelessness, some of which was no doubt due to the long-term exposure to dementors. There were no dementors on Mars, however, but that same gut clenching empathy re-emerged as he looked upon Michael Duval.

He removed his cloak, causing the psychologist to start and back up against the wall.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Harry. We're leaving Underhill tonight and Hiroko asked me to come get you."

The man was obviously terrified, but seemed to rise and dress himself without thought.

"Is there anything you want to take with you? We won't be back."

Michael grabbed his AI and spent a moment looking around his room before shaking his head and turning back to the unknown man who had magically appeared in his room.

Harry draped the cloak over both of them and whispered to Michael to crouch down a bit so that no one could see their feet. Michael followed the instruction without thought and the two of them slunk quietly back to the farm, passing no one on the way. When they re-entered the farm, a group of around ten naked children emerged from the crop rows. Desmond had been waiting and had an uncharacteristic look of shock on his face as he gazed down at the proof that Hiroko had been keeping things even from him.

The children, none could have been older than five or six, rushed up to Michael and surrounded him, hugging any part of the man they could reach. They quickly dragged him forward, leaving a stunned Harry and Desmond behind.

Harry and Desmond hid underneath the invisibility cloak and followed quietly. The various grow-lamps were so bright that the sky outside the farm's geodesic dome seemed even darker than the normal moonless nights the two hidden colonists were used to. The white luminescence of the metal halide lights mixed with the red glare from the high-pressure sodium bulbs. The resulting reddish glow was almost more Mars-like than Mars itself. This strangeness was accentuated by what was happening no more than a few meters in front of the hidden men.

The farm team, Iwao, Raul, Ellen, Rya, Gene, Evginia, all of them except for Hiroko, stood in a circle as they watched Michael approach with smiles on their faces, as naked as the children that had met them at the entrance to the farm. The stowaways watched Michael hesitate before he too stepped out of his clothes and left them lying in a pile atop his slippers.

The children suddenly ran off, squealing and giggling, through the rows of vegetation, quickly disappearing into the depths of the farm. They came back moments later with Hiroko, who was as naked as the rest. She glanced around the circle, an ethereal smile on her face as she seemed to be searching for something.

"Harry, Desmond. Join us," she said.

Harry never knew which of them made the decision to come out from under the cloak, but the two of them were suddenly the focus of the farm team and the children. They stripped, the strange feeling of shame from being the only ones clothed guiding their actions, and slowly walked towards the group. Everyone was smiling as they joined the circle.

After a few minutes, the group separated, forming a loose circle facing each other, and sat down in the dirt. Hiroko smiled and walked in around them, trailed by the children. She picked up a handful of soil as she stood next to each of them and placed it in their hands as if it were a precious gift. As she approached Harry, he stared at her lustrous skin. It seemed to shine under the lights of the farm and rippled like a disillusionment charm that was unable to hide the pure naturalness of her existence. She placed a small handful of the soil in his outstretched hands and smiled at him before moving on to Desmond. Harry sniffed at the soil, moist and warm in his hands. It smelled like Earth and rust and a thousand other things. When he glanced up he saw the others were smiling at him, though Desmond and Michael shared the same dazed expression he imagined was on his own face.

"This is our body," said Hiroko. Her voice caused Harry to become hyper-focused on what was going on around him, though he felt like he couldn't have moved if his life depended on it. Hiroko smiled enigmatically and gave each of the children their own handful of dirt. They joined the adults in the circle, sitting between them naturally, as if they had done all this many times before. And perhaps they had, thought Harry.

Hiroko sat down in the circle across from the three newcomers and between Raul and Iwao. She began chanting in Japanese. Evangia leaned over and whispered a half-explanation, half-translation to the three of them.

They were celebrating the areophany, she explained. It was a ceremony, an experience they had created together with Hiroko's guidance. It was something like a religion of landscape, an attempt to celebrate the consciousness of Mars as a physical and emotional landscape suffused with spiritual _kami_, the spiritual power or energy that rested within the planet itself.

Harry's eyes widened in realization. This wasn't the worshipping of Mars or magic or even consciousness. It was a sense of celebration of all those things that made Mars Mars and made them human. The craters and boulders, the ravines and canyons and ejecta he and Desmond had been exploring since their arrival on Mars had existed before John Boone had first set foot on the planet. Harry could feel them now like never before. Even here, in a greenhouse made to imitate Earth's environment as closely as possible, the magic of Mars seemed to reach out to him. His ears roared and his blood ran hot through his veins. He could feel the magic of the entire planet.

Hiroko finished the chant, brought her hands to her mouth and began to eat the dirt in her palm. The others followed her example and Harry joined in without hesitating. He stuck out his tongue and could feel the magic in the soil as he rubbed the gritty substance along the roof of his mouth until it became mud. It tasted metallic and rusty. He caught a whiff of rotten eggs and chemicals. He swallowed repeatedly, resisting the urge to gag. As he moved on to the rest of the pile in his hands, the others began a rhythmic humming, almost chant-like as they alternated between different vowel sounds. Aaaay, iiiii, ohhhhh, ahhhhh, ooooooo. Without any noticeable sign they stood and Harry found himself on his feet between Michael and Desmond, one a new acquaintance, the other as close to a brother as any of the Weasleys had been, both of them part of him now. They were all on Mars and all part of each other.

Hiroko began to chant in Japanese over the humming of the others and without warning there was only flesh. All of them crushed together, skin contact that Harry hadn't realized he'd been missing. Soft breasts pressed up against his back. This is our body. He could feel someone's pubic hair on his hip and saw that some of them were kissing. The three newcomers were surrounded and instead of feeling crushed or claustrophobic, Harry felt only acceptance. Bodies twisted, trying to maintain maximum contact, and what could only be an erect penis pressed up against his side. His skin burned and his heart was beating faster than he could ever remember. He saw Desmond in front of him. His brother's face was a kaleidescope. The dirt in his stomach lay heavy and he felt lightheaded. It was a mash of skin and sensation that felt more magical to Harry than anything he'd ever experienced before.

Harry could see the stars through the grow-lamps' light and the opaque dome over the farm, each of them different colors and sizes. The air seemed to pulse with magic. Hiroko was standing in front of him, slightly taller, but her eyes appeared to be even with his. He was a phoenix, ready to rise from the ashes. She kissed him, the gritty dirt on her tongue being mashed against his teeth until he opened his mouth to her. He closed his eyes and saw Olympus Mons as he and Desmond had seen it during one of their planet wrapping journeys. It seemed to grow higher and higher, touching the edge of space. He opened his eyes and she was holding Desmond. His friend was clutching his old university companion like a drowning child. Michael was pressed between Rya and Ellen, a look of peace on his face, eyes closed as they hugged and welcomed him.

Hiroko pulled back from Desmond and caught the three newcomers' eyes. "This is your initiation into the areophany, the celebration of our bodies and the body of Mars. Welcome to it. We worship this world. We intend to make a place for ourselves here, a place that is beautiful in a new Martian way, a way never seen on Earth." She turned to Michael. "We have built a hidden refuge in the south, and now we are leaving for it."

She spoke again to all three of them. "We know you, and we love you. We know we can and have used your help, and we know you can use ours. We want to build what you've been yearning for. What you have been missing here. But in all new forms. For we can never go back. We must find our own way. We must go forward. We want you to join us."

The three men shared a glance and Harry knew what their answers would be.

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_A/N: A bit of the end of the chapter is either directly from Red Mars or heavily influenced by it. I did my best to work it into the story so that you can't tell...so let me know how I did in a review :)_


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